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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



V- 



THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL 



AN OUTLINE OF ITS GROWTH IN 
MODERN TIMES 



BY 

JAMES PHINNEY MUNROE 

FORMERLY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 



3j»?< 




'^fvo-aa 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 

D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS 

1895 






l'^ 



COPYKIGHT, 1895, 

By JAMES PHINNEY MUNROE. 



Norhjooli ^rrgs: 

J. S. Gushing & Co. —Berwick & Smith. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



TO 
THE MEMOKY OF 

A. B. M. AND A. L. M. 



PREFACE. 



The following outline of a special phase of development 
in the history of education is not only incomplete, but also, 
in a measure, fragmentary. Inadequate as it is, however, 
the author issues it in the belief that it enters a territory 
in educational literature not yet fully explored. It seems 
to him that this territory nmst be thoroughly known before 
the present questions in education caji be wholly understood, 
and he hopes that his sketch may lead to an abler study 
and treatment of this field of human growth. 

He begs to acknowledge the valuable assistance and 
advice given by President Walker of the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, by Dr. Dickinson, late Secretary of 
the Massachusetts State Board of Education, and especially 
by Professor Hinsdale of the University of Michigan, who 
has reviewed and criticised the manuscript and proof of 
the entire book. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Introduction 1 



CHAPTER II. 

Rabelais. — The Revolt against Medisevalism .... 8 

CHAPTER III. 
Francis Bacon. — The Revolt against Classicism ... 36 

CHAPTER IV. 
CoMENius. — The Revolt against Feudalism .... 68 

CHAPTER V. 
Montaigne and Locke. — The Child has Senses to be trained . 95 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Jansenists and Fenelon. — The Child has a Heart to be 

developed 124 

CHAPTER VI r. 

Rousseau. — The Child has a Soul to be kept pure . . . 153 

vii 



viii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

PAGK 

Pestalozzi and Froebel. — Senses, Heart, and Soul must be 

educated together 179 

CHAPTER IX. 

Women in Education. — Education leads to and from the 

Family ; the Home is its Unit 207 

CHAPTER X. 
Summary ........... 224 

Bibliography 233 

Index 249 



THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 
CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 
HUMAN limitations; a "natural" education; growth of the 

EDUCATIONAL IDEAL; ITS OBSCURITY; ITS " HEROES " ; ITS ENE- 
MIES: medievalism; classicism; feudalism; ecclesiasticism; 

MATERIALISM. 

In few things are human limitations more evident than 
in our judgments of human progress. Our every step is 
accepted as one in a new direction; our every idea is 
advanced as one of a new growth. With us, we incline to 
think, all real reform has begun. Especially is this true, 
to-day, of educational questions, to whose solving we be- 
lieve ourselves peculiarly anointed. We feel that to us, for 
the first time in history, true pedagogic inspiration has come, 
and that from our hands, after centuries of neglect and 
misunderstanding, the child is, at last, to receive right 
education. 

It is to remind ourselves of the falseness and narrowness 
of this attitude that I have ventured to sketch the growth 
of the educational ideal, and to trace the steps through 
which it expanded from the narrow pedantry of the School- 
men into an ever broader understanding of the true function 

1 



Z THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

of teaching. In so doing, I hope to show that the perma- 
nent influences upon the growth of this educational ideal 
have been those alone which paid some heed to the natural 
development of man, that gave some study to the normal 
growth of the child, that tended, in short, towards what I 
must call, for want of a better term, a " natural " education. 

A natural education is not one, as is too often supposed, 
in which the child is left to grow up as he may, subject to 
the chances of his environment, a prey to his own inclina- 
tions. It is not one in which he is kept aloof from man, in 
a forced communion with non-human things. Neither is it 
one unwisely trusted to the instincts of a natural, but un- 
trained affection. Still less is it one in which the old ped- 
agogic drill in formal studies is thrown aside to give place 
to a pseudo-scientific playing, a vague and formless potter- 
ing with objective phenomena. The real "natural" educa- 
tion is that aimed at in the best endeavor of to-day, in 
which the child, from the moment of his birth, is steadily, 
rationally, and intelligently developed, by trained and sym- 
pathetic minds, towards the best manhood possible to him. 
Such an education is not simplj^ mental; it is physical; 
above all, it is moral. In it, the child's individuality is 
preserved, but is pruned and guided; he himself furnishes 
the impulse towards his own development, but the channels 
in which this force acts, the ends towards which it directs 
itself, are determined for him. A natural education is one 
in which the subject taught is secondary to the manner of 
teaching ; in which the task done is subsidiary to the effect 
of doing it; in which the question to be asked at the com- 
pletion of an educational step is not, What has the child 
learned? but. What has the child become? 

Far from presuming to outline, in so short a space, the 
history of modern education, I do not aim at a full analysis 
of even this one phase of it. Indeed, the history of educa- 



INTRODUCTION. 8 

tion, as of all social forces, is not to be grasped by any one 
man or group of men. It has been a balancing of bidden 
tendencies rather than a chronicle of observed attainments. 
The educational standard is at once a motive and a measure 
of social change. While the evolution of matter is marked 
by milestones of transitional types, in the evolution of mind 
there are no fixed records of progress. A fossil bone may 
unfold the life-history of a large body of mammalia, but not 
all the memoirs and letters of the eighteenth century, not 
all its state papers and secret archives, can show us when 
and how its bad standards of civilization began to grow into 
the still imperfect, but better, standards of to-day. While 
it is true that mankind, not men, make history, it is no less 
true that the only beacons in the onward sweep of the 
human flood are men. Without the " hero," as Carlyle calls 
him, to mark history, we should be swirled on in the torrent 
of events, ignorant of the vaguest outlines of a channel, 
powerless even to conjecture whence we came or whither we 
are going. 

But "heroes" are more than historical landmarks. 
They are important agents in the universal plan.^ As con- 

1 "In all epochs of the world's history, we shall find the Great 
Man to have been the indispensable saviour of his epoch ; — the light- 
ning, without which the fuel never would have burnt. The History 
of the World, I said already, was the Biography of Great Men." — 
Carlyle, Heroes and Hero- Worship (Chicago, 1891), Lect. I, 21. 

" Historians are very right in attending solely to great men ; they 
should only be careful not to represent them as anything that they are 
not ; they should represent them, not as the masters, but as the repre- 
sentatives of those who do not appear. . . . Under this reservation it 
is certain, that as every people resolves itself into its great men of all 
kinds, the history of a people ought to consist, as it does consist, in 
the history of its great men." — Victor Cousin, Introduction to the 
History of Philosophy (Linberg's translation ; Boston, 1832), Lect. 
X. 302. 



4 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

ceived by our limited faculties, all sciences — or history in 
its broadest sense — are but fragments of a universal science 
to which man may or may not ultimately attain. Eesearch 
and speculation, the farther they go, tend to strengthen more 
fully the belief that man's feeble mind, able now to examine 
life only in detail, disconnectedly, may gain, in future ages, 
the power of looking at the world as a whole, of taking 
such a bird's-eye view, so to speak, of creation, that its plan 
shall be comprehensible. Only then can there be devised a 
perfect method of education, in conformity with nature. To 
bring forward this condition, to assemble the results of the 
patient toil of specialists, master minds are sent into the 
world. Without them to generalize and to show us to what 
point man has come, progress in knowledge would be well- 
nigh impossible. Each scholar, having explored his little 
patch, having mapped its topography, would then rest con- 
tent, oblivious to its relations to other patches explored by 
other men. The master mind, however, is gifted with the 
power to extract the essentials of other men's labor, and, 
grouping them together, to show, in one broad, luminous 
plan, so large an area, so perfect a section, that the rotun- 
dity of the sphere of knowledge is at once made plain. 
Then it is that men begin to dream of a sight of the eternal 
cosmos, and, with new light and strength, to work for its 
attainment. 

Treating, then, for the sake of concreteness, the progress 
of "natural" education as a series of revolutions led by 
men, rather than as a noiseless expansion of mankind, we 
may say that the first revolt of education, in modern days, 
was against mediaevalism. This, in its broader aspect, was 
that social change which we call the Eenaissance. Prom 
the many great leaders crowding this period, Eabelais stands 
out as the champion of the new education, not because he 
laid greater stress upon education than did many others, not 



INTRODUCTION. 

because his educational ideas were more formal or more orig- 
inal; but because his vision was broader, his weapons were 
keener, his warfare was more effective. Not content with 
attacking local abuses and temporary wrongs, he levelled 
his satire at the sins which had begotten them. He battled, 
not with the imps of darkness and the brood of hell, but 
with darkness and hell themselves. In his warfare against 
medisevalism, the time-spirit was with him; but in his 
visions of reconstruction, he looked far beyond his age. 

Upon the ruins that he and his had made, there was built 
up a new educational temple, a classic one ; but it was dedi- 
cated to gods- as false as those of the Middle Ages, though 
infinitely less cruel than they. The classicism of the Ee- 
naissance, upon which the schooling of that period rested, 
was as foreign to the real science and art of education as 
was scholasticism. 

In turn, the monopoly over education which, through the 
Eenaissance, the classicists secured, was shattered, — in 
England by Bacon, in France by Descartes. As the elder 
— and as the better — leader in this second revolt, I have 
chosen Bacon. ^ 

1 Descartes was, without doubt, the greater thinker, and from him, 
more than from Bacon, came that impulse towards pure and ordered 
thought which was to be so beneficial to civilization. But Bacon, it 
seems to me, exerted a wider influence upon social progress, for the 
very reason that he was not altogether ahead of his time. He was 
tinged with current superstition, his experimentation was desultory 
and often puerile, his genius was diffusive and, therefore, not always 
effective. Nevertheless, as, similarly, in the case of Franklin,— 
whose scientific attainments were far inferior to those of many of his 
contemporaries, and whose philosophy was certainly not of a high 
order, — the union in him of homeliness and genius made just that 
bridge which was needed between the rank superstition of the Eliza- 
bethan age and the truly scientific spirit, misdirected as it often was, 
of the materialistic generations which followed. 



6 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

Medisevalism and classicism weakened, there remained 
feudalism to be cleared away before the light could reach 
mankind. This work, begun by Luther, was taken up, on 
the educational side, by Comenius, the founder of real pub- 
lic education. His theories, adorned and refined by Mon- 
taigne, co-ordinated and made scientific by Locke, spread 
slowly, through these men, from Germany and Scandinavia, 
where Comenius had planted them, into France and England. 

Beaten in the open, medisevalism and classicism took 
refuge in the Church, and, in a bad alliance, were re- 
enthroned by the Jesuits. From this new power, Jansenism 
deposed them, never again to reign. 

These successive shocks to the old order of. things had 
practically destroyed the educational city, leaving its inhabi- 
tants, the children, naked upon a desert of materialism. 
To this point, the process had been chiefly one of destruc- 
tion. From this point, it was to be one mainly of construc- 
tion. The first architect of the new city which is rising 
upon the dust of the old, was Eousseau. He laid the foun- 

The obvious objection to Descartes which might be made in this 
connection, that he was a founder of idealism, not of realism, would 
not be a valid one. Whatever the ultimate effect of his teachings, their 
immediate influence was not greatly different from .that of Bacon's. 
Both these leaders of thought freed men from tradition by making 
them self-active ; in so doing they accomplished all that, at this stage 
of progress, was necessary. 

It is interesting to observe that most, if not all, of the French 
biographers of Descartes are special pleaders. Premising the un- 
doubted superiority of Descartes as an investigator and organizer of 
scientific thought, they try to prove his superiority to Bacon in every- 
thing. His latest biographer, M. Alfred Fouillee, would even persuade 
us that Descartes anticipated the distinctive researches, among lesser 
men, of Newton, of Kant, and of Darwin. 

See, in this connection, the very vivid, though somewhat forced, 
characterization of Bacon, Descartes, and Leibnitz in De Gerando's 
Histoire comparee cles systemes de philosophie (Paris, 1804), T. I. 284. 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

dations and shaped the plan upon which later builders 
wrought. His errors were rectified by Pestalozzi, by Froe- 
bel, by the philosophers and psychologists, by the legion of 
schoolmasters, and, not least, by the myriad women who, 
after Rousseau, took their part in educational work, — a 
part essential to sound and rapid progress.^ 

Dealing, therefore, with these successive educational 
"heroes," I shall consider, as types and leaders in edu- 
cational progress, Eabelais, Francis Bacon, Comenius, 
Montaigne, Locke, the Jansenists, Fenelon, Rousseau, Pes- 
talozzi, Froebel, and, collectively, women. 

1 Of these forces I must, to my regret, wholly neglect one. The 
influence upon education of the philosophers and psychologists of our 
century is too wide and too abstruse a problem to be considered here. 



THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 



CHAPTER II. 

KABELAIS. 

The Revolt against Medievalism. 

the middle ages ; their educational standards ; the renais- 
sance ; rabelais ; his character ; his career ; his writings ; 
his aims ; gargantua ; old and new education contrasted ; 
rabelais's ideal education ; its details ; its value ; pan- 

TAGRUEL ; GARGANTUA'S LETTER; MILTOn's " TRACTATE " ; RAB- 
ELAIS'S FUNDAMENTAL TEACHINGS ; THELEME ; PANURGE ; VOYAGE 
IN QUEST OF THE ORACLE ; ITS REAL MEANING ; WHAT RABELAIS 
ACCOMPLISHED ; HIS STYLE. 

To understand fully the growth from ancient to modern 
ideals, one ought to be able to elucidate the Middle Ages; 
for in them, as well as in the elder civilizations, lie the roots 
of modern knowledge. Were these, the so-called Dark Ages, 
a necessary stage in human progress, a sort of interregiiurn 
pending the birth of new forces? Was it essential to progress 
that humanity should, on the intellectual side, lie fallow for 
centuries in order to produce, in the after years, a richer 
harvest? Or were the Middle Ages a mere grouping of 
circumstances, a logical result of themselves, a successive 
rebirth from their own spawning? However these ques- 
tions may be answered, it is plain that there existed a long 
period of outward intellectual darkness following the time 
of the Fathers of the Church, that it continued till the 
period of Charlemagne,^ when there was a faint, spasmodic 

1 Much is made of the so-called "Palace School " and " Academy " 
of Charlemagne's court, and the monk Alcuin is not seldom dubbed 



RABELAIS. 9 

resurrection of learning, that it dragged on till Abelard^ 
and the scholastics proclaimed a false dawning, and that it 
extended well into the fifteenth century, when, at last, the 
sun of the new day rose. 

During this long period, such Christian education as 
existed was mainly of the Church. To prepare men for the 
religious life, not in the purer spirit of the Fathers, but in 
the bigotry of doctrine, was the main object of teaching. 
Learning and priesthood were almost synonymous, but the 
priest was cramped by instruction, not freed by study. The 
dry formalism and dead conning of words which the stand- 
ard of the Church entailed, led, inevitably, to the dreary 
hootings of scholasticism. This owlish learning, growing 
more outrageous as its metaphysics became more absurdly 
deep, soon lost all point of contact with humanity. Its 
husks of syllogism drove all appetite for real learning from 
the mind of the student, and he contented himself, ignorant 
of better intellectual food, with a smattering of Latin, a 
jargon of philosophy. Li his sloven lips the Latin grew to 
be as false as the philosophy. Whatever the remote cause 
of the degradation preceding the Renaissance, its immediate 
source was, plainly, the low standard of education; for, 
when the sun of real learning dawned upon this intellectual 

his Minister of Public Instruction. While Charles, undoubtedly, 
made honest and serious endeavor to improve the condition of his 
household and his loosely federated subjects, it Is easy to exaggerate 
both the extent and the success of his effprts. Where the mists of 
ignorance are as heavy as they were in the ninth century, even so 
small a rush-light as that burned at Aix-la-Chapelle casts gigantic 
reflections and is easily mistaken for an educational lighthouse, 

1 For Abelard and the University of Paris, of which, virtually, he 
was the founder, consult Compayr^, Abelard; and Laurie, Bise and 
Early Const, of Univ. 

[Note. — Whenever the titles of books are not given in full, they will 
be found, extended, in the Bibliography on p. 233.] 



10 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

morass, what seemed dead and corrupt was quickened, the 
means of growth — the printing-press, the compass, and a 
thousand other material aids — arose, and, in an instant, 
historically speaking, Europe was transformed, reformation 
came, naturalism gained place, and modern civilization 
began. 

To resolve the myriad forces of the Eenaissance, tracing 
each to its source and measuring its results, would be 
impossible. Every nation of Europe did its part in the 
work of promoting true learning, but from France, modern 
" Mother of arts and eloquence," came the first great prophet^ 
the leader of revolt, the seer of real education, Francois 
Rabelais. He was the iirst modern pleader for the copart- 
nership of Nature in the bringing up of youth. No veil of 
tradition could blind him to the path which education should 
take. His words, true then, are no less true to-day. His 
plans, Utopian then, are far from their fulfilment now. 

Some one ^ compares Rabelais's writings to a Gothic 
cathedral of the florid type. Viewed point by point, the 
building is cumbered with petty and curious detail; fancy, 
in its adornment, runs mad and grows obscene ; incongruity 
is everywhere. But contemplate this mass from a distance, 
merge details in the outline of the whole, and there apjjears 
the perfection of architecture, the flower of the art. One 
must look at Rabelais in this way, seeing the beauty, the 
majesty, of his thought, forgetting the flippancy, the gro- 
tesqueness, the indecency, of its detailed form. 

The man was," in a measure, an outgrowth of his time. 
His character, individual as it was, received its mould from 
the forces of the hour. Moreover, he was a native of 

1 Lenient, La satire en France au JlVF siecle. " Rabelais n'est 
point encore un disciple de 1' architecture mathematique inauguree par 
la Renaissance : il a tons les caprices, I'exuberante confusion et la 
riche prolixite de Parchitecture gothique." 



RABELAIS. 11 

Touraine, that fantastic garden of France, where extraordi- 
nary physical vitality is linked with wonderful imagination, 
astonishing fertility of resource, an inexhaustible fund of 
Gallic honliommie. In these traits are all the elements of 
such a character as that of Rabelais: courage that could 
withstand the force of long-accepted doctrines, imagination 
that could set up and make real a world other than that 
known of tradition, laughing sunniness of temper that could 
carry reforms impossible to gravity and dulness. We fancy 
discerning in Eabelais some of the tavern-keeping spirit of 
his father, of the raillery and joviality, that, real or assumed, 
have always an eye to the business of the inn. 

Rabelais's existence was no better — it Avas certainly 
no worse — than that of his contemporaries. He was a 
hanger-on of the Papal court while protesting against its 
abuses. He was, in youth, a scandal to a monastery itself 
scandalous. He enjoyed benefices won by cringing and 
kept by favor. He was unchaste in an age when chastity 
was unmanly. He was drunken in a time when sobriety 
was a reproach. He was slavish and sycophantic in an 
era and kingdom where these qualities were the surest 
means of success. His life was a continual denial of his 
teachings, or, better, his teachings were a stinging protest 
against the life that he and his fellows led. In the tumult 
of the breaking up of the old and the rearing of the new, 
he stands, a ribald prophet, preaching the new faith in the 
old tongue. 

That he knew himself a genius superior to his age, is 
undoubted. Such satire as his sprang from a mind that 
must have gauged its power and despised its surroundings. 
Such blows as his came from a hand that felt itself gigantic. 
The spurious death scene, in which he exclaims, " Drop the 
curtain; the farce is played," expresses his attitude. He 
had lived a farce. Knowing such great things, he had done 



12 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

such mean ones. To such vision as his, the sixteenth cen- 
tury was a vulgar masque, a carnival of beastly appetites 
and low aims, played by men of god-like possibilities. 

Born the son of an inn-keeper^ in Chinon, that obscure 
cradle of the Plantagenets,^ he dies the friend of popes and 
kings, the idol of all save those whom he had scourged. 
Vowed in early life to St. Francis, he becomes, in middle 
age, a Benedictine with large benefices. Arrayed with the 
Reformers, he escapes their usual fate, and expires in the 
full material enjoyment, if not in the full odor, of sanctity. 
Attacking the Church as few others in France had dared to 
do, he remains to the last a protege of Rome. His patron, 
DuBellay,^ falls at the accession of Henry II., but Rabelais 

1 Rabelais's early history is very vague. It is generally believed 
that his father was an inn-keeper, although some authorities maintain 
that Rabelais was the son of an apothecary, while it is not impossible 
that the two vocations were united. Nothing is known of his mother, 
and even the date of his birth is in dispute. If in 1483, then many 
years of his life cannot be accounted for, and his books must have 
been finished in extreme old age. If, on the other hand, the date 1495 
is accepted, there is difficulty in reconciling it with trustworthy 
tradition. 

2 Geoffrey, son of Fulk the Black, was the first of the Counts of 
Anjou to receive the nickname " Plantagenet." He it was who 
married Matilda, the widowed empress, and became, by her, the father 
of the future Henry II. of England. 

For an interesting account of Chinon and of the Counts of 
Anjou, see Old Touraine, by Theodore A. Cook. (New York, 1893, 
2 vols.) 

3 "Le troisieme des freres du Bellay, Jean. . . . Ce bon et pieux 
personnage, le parrain de Gargantua, fut plus tard ministre du roi 
pour ses petites affaires secretes du cote des Turcs, le bon ami de Bar- 
berousse et le correspondant de Soliman. Eveque de Paris, cardinal, 
il ne fut pas loin, dit-on, d'etre pape. La chose eut ete piquante. 
Rabelais 6tait son Evangile. II a travaille plus que personne a creer 
le College de France." — Michelet, Hist, de France, T. 8 ("Re- 
forme"), 383. 



RABELAIS. 13 

gains rather than loses by Francis's death. ^ Hated alike 
by good Catholic and rigid Calvinist, he withstands their 
clashing wrath. The storm that he aroused seemed power- 
less to reach him, falling on lesser figures, not on his. He 
was too worldly to sacrifice himself, too keen to commit 
himself, too powerful to be suppressed. He passed through 
the tempest of the Reformation, one of its foremost figures, 
one of its hardest fighters, with no hurt to himself. He 
was bold as Luther, but he possessed nothing of Luther's 
martyr-spirit. He exposed the Church with his right 
hand while clutching her favors with his left. He was 
first a man of the world, only incidentally a reformer. 
Both he and Luther were strong because they reached 
the people, but their channels of influence ran in opposite 
ways. 

His medical career, wherein, in middle life, he studied at 
Montpellier^ and practised at Lyons, was characteristic, 
not only proving the marvellous facility of his mind, but 
showing how adroitly he could shift the frock for the gown 
and the gown for the frock, as better served his immediate 
ends. To the close of his life he practised medicine, while 
remaining a priest, and, passing his declining years in the 
cure of Meudon, he was still Doctor Rabelais. To this 
chameleon grasp of opportunity his safety in those ticklish 
times was due. His work as a physician, moreover, turned 
his mind to writing. His vast erudition, enriched by medi- 

1 Largely through the favor of Diane de Poitiers. See Notice his- 
torique sur la vie et les ouvrages de F. Babelais, par L. Jacob, biblio- 
phile (pseudonym of P. Lacroix), Paris, 1868. (Prefaced to (Euvres 
de F. Babelais.) 

2 ' ' The records of the Faculty of Montpellier bear the name of 
Rabelais, as candidate, under the date of Sept. 17, 1530, and, as bach- 
elor, under that of Nov. 1 of the same year." — Fleury, Bab. et ses 
oeuv., Ch. XIII. He was not made Doctor of Medicine, however, 
until May 22, 1537, after a sojourn at Rome. 



14 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

cal research, the freedom of study and analysis permitted 
in the schools of healing, his work in editing old texts, 
combined to lead him to authorship. Well after the middle 
point of life, he composed, in the intervals of a busy exist- 
ence, "while eating and drinking," as he expresses it, the 
five books which have made him immortal. 

The Pantagrueline books are of the type of the second 
part of Faust. There is a like, though lesser, intellectual 
sweep, a similar lack of continuity, a like evidence of 
growth out of a different and smaller scheme. There is, in 
both, a strange mingling of the human and superhuman, 
adding to the strength while taking from the unity of the 
design. As in Goethe's masterpiece, one's interest is not 
so much in the theme or in the characters as in the 
summing-up of humanity, the propounding of the hardest 
questions of existence. Each is a growth, not a creation. 
Each is a philosophy rather than a romance. 

The manner of their composition is interesting, and is 
plainly to be traced. First appeared,^ in satire of the 
extravagant romances of the day, the Chronique Gargantuine. 
A year or two later, ^ was published the first book of 
Pantagruel, still extravagant, still monstrous, but dealing 
with eternal problems. Both meeting with extraordinary 
success, the Chronique was rewritten to serve as an intro- 
duction to Pantagruel, which became, thereafter, the second 
book. This enlarged Gargantua,^ Eabelais's greatest pro- 
duction from the standpoint of education, is, therefore, a 
thing of patches. A bit of profound truth, a rare prophecy, 
alternate with chapters of grossest foolery, relics of the old 
extravagance. 

The way now being plain, the mental drift determined, 

1 In 1631 or 1532. -^ 1533. 

8 Published in 1535. 



RABELAIS. 15 

there appeared, in 1546, under shelter of royal sanction,^ 
the second book of Fantagruel, the third of the series. 
This, intellectually, is his masterpiece; it is satire at the 
highest. The fourth and fifth books, devoted to the voyage 
of Pantagruel in search of the Oracle, while more homo- 
geneous than the earlier ones, are, for our present purpose, 
far inferior, and possess no vital interest. To a study of 
Eabelais as a whole, however, they are the key. 

Here it seems proper to identify and defend my position 
as to the ever-mooted question of Eabelais 's purpose in 
these books. ^ Either he was a gross panderer to vulgar, 

1 Privilege of Francis 1st, dated Sept. 19, 1545. 

2 Two quotations will serve to exemplify the antipodal position of 
the critics of llabelais. Michelet says of him (Hist, de France, VIII, 
428): "Wliat was he? Ask, rather, what he was not. A man 
versed in every study, every art, every tongue, tlie true Fan-ourgos, 
universal agent in things scientific and political, who was everything 
and was fitted for everything, who contained the genius of the cen- 
tury and lavished it without stint. ... A bold navigator upon the 
deep sea that had engulfed the old gods, he sets out to seek the great 
Perhaps ; . . . already America and the new isles, already the chem- 
ical substances extracted from plants, already the motion of the blood, 
the circulation of life, the interdependence of the bodily functions, 
press forward in the Pantagruel in sublime pages which, under a 
light and ironical form, are, none the less, the religious hymns of the 
Kenaissance." Contrast with this outburst, the judgment of Sir 
James Stephen {Lectures on the History of France., London, 1857) : 
"A genuine epicurean gifted with gigantic powers, but of cold affec- 
tions and debased appetites ; ever worshipping and obeying his one 
idol, Pleasure, though at one time she bids him soar to the empyrean 
and at another commands him to wallow in the sty. . . . Deep and 
fatal are the traces of his example and of his fame in the literary 
history of his native land. With him commences the lineage of those 
eminent spirits who have waged war in France against the moral and 
religious convictions and even against the social decencies of the 
Christian world ; a war productive of some of the sorest troubles, or 
rather, let us say, of some of the heaviest chastisements, which have 
rebuked the offences of the nations of modern Europe." 



16 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

corrupted tastes, — in which case we must believe his in- 
sight to have been blind accident, — or he was a reformer 
wise as the serpent, covering his wisdom so skilfully 
that the dulness of the multitude did not reject it nor 
the craft of the Church ferret it out. The adventures 
of Gargantua and Pantagruel must be classed, either as 
scandalous romances without form or purpose except to 
debauch, or as one of the great reforming agencies of the 
Eenaissance. There can be, it seems to me, no middle 
belief. If we cannot be satisfied that we have here but one 
more of the Middle Age chronicles, then we must see in 
Rabelais 's work a conscious plan, a moral medicine, dis- 
guised in such shape as the manner of the time suggested.^ 
The chronicle begins with a description of an orgy in 
which is uttered the famous apostrophe to drinking, one of 
the best examples of the fecundity and floridity of Rabelais's 
vocabulary. It defies adequate translation, for it is a very 
riot of words, real and imagined, thrown one upon another 
in a whirlwind of rhetoric. It is followed by the birth of 
Gargantua, who is son to Grandgousier and Gargamelle, 
giants as is he. After a chapter or two devoted to the 

1 We must keep in mind, too, the entire inconsistency of these 
chronicles. In the sixteenth century, literature had not been brought 
within bounds. The critical sense was so little developed that form 
was almost neglected. More than this, the romances which were the 
fashion of the day had fitted the common mind to a comprehension 
and appreciation of the exaggerated and grotesque only. When, then, 
Rabelais treats liis characters, first as giants of prodigious size, then 
as mortals of common stature, and when, as is often the case, one of 
heroic mould shares the adventures of an ordinary man, it is a matter 
of no moment to the progress of the satire. It is as idle to criticise 
this incongruity as to find fault with the perspective of a vigorous 
Japanese drawing ; yet this inconsistency forms a staple argument 
with those who would prove that Rabelais is nothing more than a 
literary buffoon. 



KABELAIS. 17 

prodigious doings of Gargantua, to his rearing and the cut 
of his clothes, to the manner of his eating, and to other 
details, all grotesque, come those great chapters which em- 
brace the beginning and the end of right education, — 
chapters whose diligent study and faithful application would 
revolutionize pedagogics. The fine irony and delicious 
satire of the first, describing false training, are excelled 
only by the dignity and serene wisdom of the second, 
expounding true education. 

I will pass over the description of Gargantua's gluttony, 
his gross playing and swinish sleeping, his uncleanliness 
and stupidity, his eternal mumbling of prayers, and will 
quote only from the description of his intellectual train- 
ing:— 

" In the first place he was taught by a wonderful master 
of sophism, Holofernes, who instructed to such purpose that 
he could say his ABC by heart, backwards. And for this 
were needed five years and three months ; " — absolute figures 
are characteristic — "then were read to him Donat,^le Facet,^ 
Theodelet,^ and Alanus ^ in paraholis, for the space of thirteen 
years, six months, and two weeks ; . . . then were taught 
to him the De Modis Significandi ^ and the commentaries 
of . . .," ^ but I will omit the list, which, as usual, Kabelais 
gives at length — " This for the space of eighteen years and 
eleven months, and he knew it so well that, at his examina- 

1 '■'• JElii Donati de octo partihus orationis libellus.''^ This Latin 
grammar was in such universal use in the mediaeval schools that Donat 
became synonymous with Grammar. 

2 '•'• Liber faceti morosi docens mores hominum.''^ 

3 " Ecloga TheodulV Allegory, in dialogue, against paganism. 

* Alain de Lisle, a Cistercian monk of the twelfth century, known 
as Doctor universalis. 
^ By Jean de Garlande. 
^ Gargantua, Liv. I., Ch. XIV. 



18 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

tion, he said it by heart, backwards. And he proved upon 
his fingers, to his mother, that cle modis signijicandi non 
erat scientia. Then he was taught the Compost'^ for the 
space of sixteen years and two months, when his perceptor " 
— not without cause, we must think — " died. . . . Then 
was placed over him an old cougher," — fossil would be our 
modern slang, — who taught him a host of treatises, " in 
the reading of which he became so wise that we have never 
since seen his equal." 

Now this slow haste of fifty years — time, too, is on a 
gigantic scale — is not pleasing to the old Grandgousier, 
especially when he finds his son, after all this cramming of 
scholastic lore, to be inferior, both in manners and in 
understanding, "to one of the young men of the present 
time, " — that is, of the time of which Rabelais dreams, — 
" who may have studied not more than two years, for such 
an one has better judgment, better address, better manners, 
better conversation and behavior towards the world than 
he.'"^ To prove this, such a young man is brought in, and 
marvellous is the contrast.^ This object lesson suffices. 
Grandgousier loses no time in putting his son under the 
tutor of this model youth, and, after more nonsense, includ- 
ing the purging of the young giant's memory of all the 
dreary rubbish which had choked it, the new task is begun. 
Having ridiculed out of existence the old way of teaching, 
Rabelais shows us, as he foresees it, a picture of the new.* 

Here is an outline of the day's work, divested of the 
Rabelaisian word- juggling with which, in the original, it is 
overlaid. Gargantua arose about four o'clock in the morn- 
ing. While he bathed, passages from the Scriptures were 

1 A treatise on the calculation of the calendar. 
- Oargantua, Liv. L, Ch. XV. 
^ Ibid; Besant, Bead, in Bab., 13, 
^ Ch. XXIII. and XXIV. 



RABELAIS. 19 

read to him, distinctly and clearly, with proper emphasis. 
Subsequently, his tutor went over the extracts, explaining 
difficult and obscure points to him. They then observed the 
sky, noting if it were of the same aspect as on the night 
preceding. This done, he was dressed, during which time 
his lessons of the day before were reviewed. Sometimes, in 
so doing, hard points arose, the discussion of which occupied 
several hours, but, ordinarily, this review ended with the 
dressing. This over, they went out of doors, — always 
engaged upon the subject of the lessons, — and played 
tennis and other games, properly exercising the body as 
they had, heretofore, the mind. Being now in a good 
sweat, they were wiped and rubbed down and their shirts 
were changed. 

While waiting for dinner, extracts from the lessons are 
recited, clearly and carefully. " Now comes Master Appe- 
tite, and they sit down at table. At the beginning of the 
repast, some pleasant tale of ancient valor is read to them ; 
then, if they please, the reading is continued, or they con- 
verse cheerf ally together, talking of the virtues, properties, 
efficacy, and nature of everything on the table. So doing, 
they soon learn what the ancient authors have taught us in 
these matters. Then, finishing the repast with confections, 
they wash their faces and hands in cold water, and give 
thanks to God for his bounty." This done, cards are 
brought, not for play, but for the learning of a thousand 
little tricks and inventions, all founded upon arithmetic; 
by which means Gargantua comes to love the science of 
numbers, and, by dint of pla^dng with cards and dice every 
day, grows so learned in it, "that Tunstal confessed freely 
that he himself knew only the rudiments."^ 

1 This must be a polite sarcasm. The Bishop of Durham, while a 
scholar, intimate with Erasmus, was not conspicuous as a mathemati- 
cian. He had been recently at Paris, in the train of Vt^olsey. 



20 » THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

"And not only this, but other mathematical sciences, 
geometry, astronomy, music," were learned in kindred ways. 

An hour thus employed, digestion accomplished, he bent 
himself to the main studying of the day for the space of 
three hours, reviewing former lessons, taking up new ones, 
writing, drawing, and lettering. This over, he sallied forth, 
and was taught, by a young gentleman of Touraine, the art 
of horsemanship. To this were added the accomplishments 
of sword-play, lance -play, and hunting. Then followed 
swimming lessons. Issuing, all glowing, from the water, 
he ran, climbed trees, wrestled, and indulged in every sort 
of athletic exercise. To train his lungs, he shouted " with 
such a voice as Stentor never had." Exercise over, he was 
rubbed, dried, and freshly clad, and went out into the fields, 
studying plants, trees, and flowers. Returning to the house, 
they partook of supper, and, " mark you, while their dinner 
in the middle of the day was light and frugal, their supper 
was copious and generous. Wherein is the true principle 
of diet." Grace said, they betook themselves to singing and 
the playing of instruments, and to the pastimes with cards, 
sometimes varying their occupations by visiting men of 
letters and travellers from foreign lands. In the evening, 
before going to bed, they searched the heavens, noting the 
figuration and aspect of the stars. Then, with his tutor, 
Gargantua reviewed, briefly, after the manner of the Pythag- 
oreans, all that he had read, seen, learned, done, and heard, 
in the course of the day. " Finally, adoring and glorifying 
God, he went to rest." And weary must he have been. 

On rainy days, Gargantua, instead of the outdoor exer- 
cises, studied the arts and sciences, and their applications, 
visiting the workshops of artisans ; instead of botanizing, he 
visited the shops of druggists and apothecaries, studying 
the art of healing. On such days the supper was more 
frugal, " in order that the intemperate dampness of the air, 



RABELAIS. 21 

communicated to the body by necessary proximity, might, 
by this means, be corrected." ^ By the methods thus stated, 
study " became rather like a pastime of kings than the labor 
of a scholar." However, to rest the mind from the tedium 
of continued application, he took, once a month, a complete 
holiday in the open air, playing, leaping, singing, and 
reciting Virgil. 

Here we have the germ — more than the germ, the perfect 
flower — of a well-rounded education. Here we have the 
dependence, close as possible, of instruction upon daily life 
and common things ; here we have the review by which the 
fact is fixed and its relationship to other facts made clear; 
here we have the perfection of physical exercise ; the splen- 
did picture of the youth, glowing from his bath, racing, 
climbing, rubbed and clad afresh; here we find practical 
technology, and the rational search of nature; and, finally, 
we have, throughout, the fine spirit of reverence, which is 
as simple as it is profound. A wonderful dream and fore- 
sight of the best aims of to-day! The whole science and 
art of education, a text for a thousand treatises ! ^ 

I might extract from Rabelais 's writings many additions 
to this general scheme of a true education. I content 
myself, however, with giving, almost in its entirety, the 
letter which Gargantua, grown old, sends to his son Pantag- 
ruel, after the young man has gone to Paris to complete 
his studies.^ To those who declare Rabelais to be an 
atheist, a railer, a corrupter of morals, a scoffer at decency, 
this letter is a sufficient answer. 

1 This was the age, it will be remembered, of belief in " humours " 
and in the direct agency of external influences upon them. 

2 Cf. Eugene Leveque, Les mythes et les legendes de VInde et la 
Perse, p. 548 (Paris, 1880) for a source of Gargantua's education in 
that of Bharata, given in the Bctmayana. 

3 Pantagruel, Liv. II., Ch. VIII. 



22 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

"... Now therefore, with just and right cause, I give 
thanks to Grod, my preserver, in that He has permitted me 
to see my withered age reflourish in thy youth. For when, 
at the pleasure of Him who rules and ordains all things, 
my soul shall leave its mortal house, I shall account myself 
not wholly to die, but simply to pass from one place to 
another, while in thee and through thee I continue in my 
very image, visible to the world, living, seeing, and con- 
versing among my friends as I used. The which my con- 
versation has been, not without sin, I confess (for we are 
all sinners, continually beseeching God to forgive our 
trespasses), but, by Divine aid and grace, without reproach. 
Wherefore, in so far as dwells in thee the image of my 
body, so equa-lly should be enkindled in thee the qualities 
of the soul, by which alone shalt thou be judged as the 
guardian and keeper of the immortality of our name ; and 
my pleasure in seeing this would be small if that the least 
part of me, which is the body, should remain, and the best, 
which is the soul, and through which alone our name may be 
a blessing to men, should be degenerate and bastard. The 
which I say through no distrust of thy virtue, which has 
been already proven to me, but the rather to encourage thee 
to strive on from good to better. And what I herein write 
is not so much that thou shouldst live in this thy virtuous 
course, but that thou shouldst rejoice in so living and in so 
having lived, refreshing thyself thereby with courage for 
the future. To perfect and consummate which end, I may 
remind thee how I have spared nothing ; but so have propped 
thee up as if I had no other treasure in the world save in 
the seeing of thee, during my life, whole and perfect, equally 
in virtue, honesty, and valor, as in all liberal and right 
knowledge ; and so to leave thee after my death, as a mirror 
reflecting me thy father, and if not to bring thee to such a 
point of excellence as I might wish, still to inspire the thirst 
for its attainment. 



RABELAIS. 23 

"But, while my late father of blessed memory, Grand - 
gousier, bent all his study to what might i^rofit me to all 
perfection and human knowledge, and while my labor and 
study corresponded to, yea, exceeded his desire, still, as thou 
canst well understand, the times were not so full and fit in 
learning as now, and such abundance of teachers as thou 
hast had was not. The times were still dark, savoring of 
the terror and calamity of the Goths, by whom good litera- 
ture had been utterly destroyed. But, by the favor of God, 
its light and dignity have been, even within my day, 
restored, and I see in it such growth that, now, I should 
fail of entrance into an upper class of little boys,^ I who, in 
my time, was esteemed (not without reason) the most learned 
of the age. 

" Wherefore, my son, I admonish thee that thou employ 
thy youth to good profit in study and in virtue. Thou art 
in Paris, thou hast for thy tutor Epistemon, whereby, the 
one through noble examples, the other, through quickening 
instruction, may forward thee. I expect and desire that 
thou shouldst learn perfectly the languages. First Greek, 
as Quintilian advises; secondly, Latin; and then, Hebrew, 
because of the Holy Scriptures. Likewise, Chaldee and 
Arabic ; and form thy style, as to Greek, after Plato ; as to 
Latin, after Cicero. Let there be no history which is not 
firm in thy memory, to which end cosmography will help 
thee. Of the liberal arts, I gave thee a taste of geometry, 
arithmetic, and music when thou wast still little, no older 
than five or six ; pursue the rest and search out all the laws 
of astronomy. As to astrology and the Lullian art/ leave 

1 " Petitz grimaulx." 

2 Lully's aim seems to have been as high as that of Francis Bacon, 
which was to find a key to universal knowledge. The result in the 



24 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

them; they are abuses and vanities. Know by heart the 
texts of civil law and compare them with the teachings of 
philosophy. 

" Now, as to the facts of nature, addict thyself studiously 
to the learning of them, so that there be no sea, river, or 
lake of which thou knowest not the fish; so that all the 
birds of the air, all the plants and fruits of the forest, all 
the flowers of the soil, all the metals hid in the bowels of 
the earth, all the gems of the East and South, none shall be 
foreign to thee. 

" Most carefully peruse the writings of physicians, Greek, 
Arab, Latin, despising not even the Talmudists and Cabal- 
ists; and by frequent searching gain perfect knowledge of 
the microcosm, man.^ And at certain hours of the day, turn 
to the Holy Scriptures. First to the New Testament and 
Epistles, in Greek, then to the Old Testament, in Hebrew. 
In short, let me behold in thee an abyss of learning; for, as 
thou becomest a man and great, thou must come out from 
this tranquillity and calm of study, learning chivalry and 
arms, wherewith to defend my house and to succor our dear 
friends from hurt of evil-doers. I would that thou shouldst 
shortly learn how much thou hast profited, the which thou 
canst no more easily do than by maintaining theses, publicly 
against all comers, frequenting, too, the company of the 
learned. 

" But, because, as saith the wise Solomon, wisdom enters 
not the wicked heart, and knowledge without conscience is 
but the ruin of the soul, it behooves thee to serve, love, and 

case of the former, however, was httle more than an alphabetical and 
geometrical word-juggling. See the interesting account of him in 
H. C. Lea's Hist, of the Inquisitioti of the Middle Ages (New York, 
1888), in. 578. 

1 Perhaps a too free rendering of '■'■ et par frequentes anatomies 
acqiiiers toy parfaicte congnoissance de Vaultre monde, qui est Vhomme" 



RABELAIS. 25 

fear God, putting in Him all thy hope, all thy thought; 
and, by a faith founded on love, cleave thou to Him so that 
thou shalt never be torn from Him by sin. Have a care of 
the follies of the world. Fix not thy heart on vanities ; for 
this life is transitory : but the world of God endureth for- 
ever. Serve thy neighbors and love them as thyself. 
Revere thy teachers, shun companions whom thou wouldst 
not resemble, and receive not in vain the graces with which 
God has endowed thee. And when thou shalt perceive 
thyself to have acquired all this knowledge which I have 
pointed out to thee, return to me, that I may behold thee 
and give thee my blessing before I die. 

"My son, the peace and grace of our Lord be with 
thee. Amen. 

"From Utopia,^ this 17 day of the month of March. 

"Thy father, 

^' Gargantua." 

In these inadequate quotations is embraced the message of 
Rabelais.^ All else he wrote is but the setting to this pearl. 

1 A reprint of the first edition of More's Utopia was pubHshed at 
Paris in 1518. 

2 There is a singular parallelism between the principles laid down 
by Rabelais and those contained in the famous tractate, On Educa- 
tion, of Milton. This marked resemblance is due in part, of course, 
to the fact that both courses of study were, as Milton says of his own, 
" Likest to those ancient and famous schools of Pythagoras, Plato, 
Isocrates, Aristotle, and such others, out of which were bred such a 
number of renowned philosophers, orators, historians, poets, and princes 
all over Greece, Italy, and Asia, besides the flourishing studies of 
Cyrene and Alexandria" ; but, as the following necessarily discon- 
nected extracts will show, the likeness is so close as to suggest, at 
least, a great admiration upon the part of the Puritan Englishman for 
the Frenchman, puritan in far different fashion, who preceded him by 
about a century. Milton says, concerning the education of young 
men: "... First, they should begin with the chief and necessary 



26 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

The contempt of sham, the ridicule of pretence, the hatred 
of tyranny, which appear again and again in the medley of 

rules of some good grammar, . . . and while this is doing, their speech 
is to be fashioned to a distinct and clear pronunciation. . . . Next, 
to make them expert in the usefullest points of grammar, and withal 
to season them and win them early to the love of virtue and true 
labour, . . . some easy and delightful book of education would be 
read to them, whereof the Greeks have store. 

" But here the main skill and groundwork will be, to temper them 
such lectures and explanations, upon every opportunity, as may lead 
and draw them in willing obedience, inflamed with the study of learn- 
ing and the admiration of virtue ; stirred up with high hopes of living 
to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God and famous to all 
ages. That they may despise and scorn all their childish and ill- 
taught qualities, to delight in manly and liberal exercises. ... At 
the same time, some other hour of the day, might be taught them the 
rules of arithmetic ; and soon after the elements of geometry, even 
playing, as the old manner was. After evening repast, till bedtime, 
their thoughts would be best taken up in the easy grounds of religion 
and the story of scripture. 

" The next step would be to the authors of agriculture. ... It will 
be then seasonable for them to learn in any modern author the use of 
the globes, and all the maps, first, with the old names, and then with 
the new ; or they might be then capable to read any compendious 
method of natural philosophy. 

"... Having thus passed the principles of arithmetic, geometry, 
astronomy, and geography, with a general compact of physics, they 
may descend in mathematics to the instrumental science of trigonom- 
etry, and from thence to fortification, architecture, enginery, or navi- 
gation. And in natural philosophy they may proceed leisurely from 
the history of meteors, minerals, plants, and living creatures, as far as 
anatomy. 

"Then also in course might be read to them, out of some not tedious 
writer, the institution of physic, that they may know the tempers, the 
humours, the seasons, and how to manage a crudity. ... To set 
forward all these proceedings in nature and mathematics, what hin- 
ders but they may procure, as oft as shall be needful, the helpful 
experience of hunters, fowlers, fishermen, shepherds, gardeners, 



RABELAIS. 27 

his five books, are but reiterations of his plea for the man- 
liness, the liberty, the piety, that are the foundations of 



apothecaries ; and in the other sciences, architects, engineers, mari- 
ners, anatomists ; who doubtless would be ready, some for reward, 
and some to favour such a hopeful seminary. And this will give them 
such a real tincture of natural knowledge, as they shall never forget, 
but daily augment with delight." 

Here follow recommendations to study ethics, politics, and civil law. 

"Sundays also and every evening may be now understandingly 
spent in the highest matters of theology and church history, ancient 
and modern ; and ere this time the Hebrew tongue at a set hour 
might have been gained, that the scriptures may be now read in their 
own original ; whereto it would be no impossibility to add the Chaldee 
and the Syrian dialect. 

" And now, lastly, will be the time to read with them those organic 
arts, which enable men to discourse and write perspicuously, elegantly, 
and according to the fittest style, of lofty, mean, or lowly. Logic, 
therefore, so much as is useful, is to be referred to this due place. . . . 
To which poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather prece- 
dent. 

"... This institution of breeding which I here delineate shall be 
equally good both for peace and war. Therefore about an hour and a 
half ere they eat at noon should be allowed them for exercise, and 
due rest afterwards ; but the time for this may be enlarged at pleas- 
ure, according as their rising in the morning shall be early. 

"The exercise which I commend first, is the exact use of their 
weapon ; . . . this will keep them healthy, nimble, strong and well in 
breath. . . . They must be also practised in all the locks and gripes of 
wrestling, wherein Englishmen were wont to excel. . . . The interim 
of unsweating themselves regularly, and convenient rest before meat 
may, both with profit and delight, be taken up in recreating and com- 
posing their travailed spirits with the solemn and divine harmonies of 
music, heard or learned. 

"... They are, by a sudden alarum or watchword, to be called 
out to their military motions, under sky or covert, according to the 
season . . . first on foot, then, as their age permits, on horseback, to 
all the art of cavalry ; that, having in sport, but with much exactness 
and daily muster, served out the rudiments of their soldiership, . . . 



28 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

this scheme of education. He would not destroy the 
Church, for, relentlessly pointing out her corruptions, he 
carefully maintains her spiritual supremacy; but he would 
tear down the abuses of religion, which had made a mockery 
of priesthood and a travesty of learning. He did not cavil 
at the law, but upheld her majesty by scourging the " Catch- 
poles, " 1 the " furred cats, " ^ the " Bridlegeese, " ^ who had con- 
verted the halls of justice into auction rooms. So reverent 
was he of his profession, medicine, that he could find no 
words too stinging for quacks and charlatans. He would 
strip life of all the mummery and falsehood which monks 
and pedants had wrapped about it, and would bring man 
face to face with nature. He would make of religion a 
spontaneous act, the normal result of a study of God's 
works, not the unmeaning formalism of a corrupted Church. 
He would found philosophy upon legitimate search and 
reasoning, not upon forced syllogisms. He hated asceticism 
and scholasticism with the scorn of an honest mind that had 
tested the hollowness of both. He knew that only in the 
sound body and the reverent mind can real learning flourish. 

they may . . . come forth renowned and perfect commanders in the 
service of their country. 

"... Besides these constant exercises at home, there is another 
opportunity of gaining experience to be won from pleasure itself 
abroad . . . learning and observing all places of strength, all com- 
modities of building and of soil, for towns and tillage, harbours and 
ports for trade. 

" Now lastly, for their diet there cannot be much to say, save only 
that it would be best in the same house ; for much time else would be 
lost abroad, and many ill habits got ; and that it should be plain, 
healthful, and moderate, I suppose is out of controversy." — Prose 
Works of John Milton, III. 462. (London, H. G. Bohn, 1848.) 

1 Besant, Read, in Bab. 239. 

'^ Ibid. 326. 

»Ibid. 193 Q' Bridoye''). 



RABELAIS. 29 

He saw that to conquer nature, to make her the ally of man, 
she must not be thwarted, as by the monks and scholars, 
but must be made a friend, yielding to him who humbly 
seeks, her deepest secrets. He discerned the glorious aver- 
age of man, that even balancing of body, mind, and soul, 
which, in maintaining spiritual equilibrium, makes us one 
with God. Everywhere he saw men slaves to each other 
and to themselves. To be released, he knew, they must 
free themselves from their lower natures. But he saw,, 
as none other did, that self -emancipation does not come "^ 
through asceticism or through transcendentalism, but from 
bodily vigor, honest work, hard study, healthy thinking, 
and reverent communion with nature. 

This spiritual liberty is taught in his first book, the 
Gargantua, in the chapters on education, contrasting, as we 
have seen, the old training, as it existed, with the new, as 
he conceived it. The lesser forms of freedom, that from 
kings and that from priests, are exemplified, in the same 
book, by two incidents, the first showing to what follies 
lust of power led King Picrochole ; the latter, picturing, in 
the Abbey of Theleme, the perfect religious life.^ It is not 

1 One extract will sufi&ce to show the wholesomeness of Kabelais's 
conception of religious liberty : ' ' Their entire life was governed, not 
by statutes, laws, or rules, but by their own free will and choice. They 
arose when they pleased, drank, ate, worked, slept, as the humor 
moved them. No one awakened them, none forced them to drink, 
eat, or do aught else. For so Gargantua had established it. Their 
rules were included within this one sentence, Do What Thou 
Wilt. Because free persons, well-born, well-bred, of good conver- 
sation, have a natural instinct and spur urging them to virtuous living 
and restraining them from vice — namely, honor. The same persons, 
brought down and held under vile subjection and restraint, turn aside 
from a noble affection toward virtue, the better to throw off the yoke 
that enthralls them. For we are prone to enter into forbidden things 
and to long for what is denied us. But, being free, all strove in 



30 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

necessary to dwell upon the war of Picrocliole and Grand- 
gousier, for its treatment is not original, except in the sur- 
prising humor of the satire against predatory warfare and 
foolish ambition.^ Neither is it possible for us to follow 
Kabelais in his characteristically florid description of the 
Abbey of Theleme — a description so exact in its details that 
modern architects have drawn its plan.^ 

I have said that interest does not attach so much to the 
figures as to the philosophy of Rabelais 's creations. I should 
have made exception of the third book, — the second Pantag- 
o'uel, — for in this the study of character is masterly. In 
it are contrasted three marked types, in the persons of 
Pantagruel, the result of two generations of rational train- 
ing ; of Friar John, the man of noble instincts made beastly 
by monkish training ; of Panurge, the man of the world, the 
fruit of all the evil influences of the day. Through these 
three men, the education of the monastery and that of the 
dying chivalry are brought into sharp contrast with the new 

pleasant rivalry to do the will of each. ... So nobly did they apply 
themselves to learning that not one among them but could read, write, 
sing, play upon instruments, speak five or six languages, and compose 
therein both in prose and in verse. Never were knights so brave, so 
gallant, so skilled on foot and on horseback, so adroit in arms, as they. 
Never were ladies so perfect, so dainty, less froward, more ready with 
the hand and needle in all womanly occupations, than those. 

"For which reason, when the time came that any, either at his 
parents' wish or for other cause, would go from the Abbey, with him 
he would take one of the ladies, her to whom he had sworn fealty, 
and they would marry. And if they had lived in devotion and friend- 
ship in Theleme, still more did they in marriage, preserving their fond 
affection to the end of their days." 

1 See Fleury, Bab. et ses oeuv., Ch. V.; and Besant, Bead, in 
Bab. 32. 

2 See rieury, Ch. VI. ; and Besant, 58. For the plan, consult A. 
Heulhard, Babelais, ses voyages en Italie ; son exil a 3Ietz, 8. (Paris, 
1891.) 



RABELAIS. 31 

education taught by Rabelais. Perhaps we are justified 
in taking Friar John as the type of pure animalism, in 
which corruption is only superficial; Panurge as the type 
of pure intellect, whose debasement sinks him lower than 
the beasts; and Pantagruel as the perfect type, the bal- 
ance of body, brain, and soul, made possible by proper 
education. 

From a dramatic standpoint, Panurge is Eabelais's greatest 
creation. He ranks with the typical characters of Shake- 
speare.^ From the moment when, entering the romance, 
he greets Pantagruel in twelve different languages, to the 
end of the fifth book, Panurge serves, not only as the chief 
mouthpiece of Rabelais's satire, but as a necessary foil to 
the high and manly — the truly ideal — character of Pantag- 
ruel. His self-conceit, his swaggering, his crafty im- 
providence, his low cunning, his abject cowardice in 
face of actual danger, above all, the utter misuse and 
waste of his keen intellect and brilliant wit through the 
moral deformity of the man — are admirably depicted. 
But a study of him, interesting as he is, goes beyond 
our limits. It is around him that the last three books 
are grouped. The exertions of Pantagruel and his fol- 
lowers, their questioning of fate by divers methods, their 
journeyings to foreign lands, and their final and arduous 
quest of the Oracle of the Bottle, are all in search of an 
answer to the question of Panurge, — which is, no less, the 
question of to-day, — "Shall I marry?" The philosophy, 
the satire, as well as the narrative of these books, hangs, 
often by slenderest threads, to the main proposition, which 
is, superficially, Is marriage the means to greatest happi- 

1 In this connection see Wilhelm Konig, Ueher die Entlehnungen 
Shakespeare's inbesondere aiis Bahelais und einigen italienischen 
Dramatikern; in Jahrhuch der Deutschen Shakespeare- Gesellschaft 
(9ter Jahrganj, Weimar, 1874), 195. 



32 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

ness? but which is, deeply, Can knowledge be attained out- 
side the sphere of the senses? 

The answer comes at last. Every test of the occult 
known to Rabelais — and his erudition, which he delights 
in showing, is immense^ — has been tried with negative 
results. There remains the Oracle of the Bottle, the way 
to which is long and difficult. Through adventures extraor- 
dinary the shrine is reached. The necessary hocus-pocus is 
made, the bottle answers, uttering but one word, "Drink." 

Omar Khayyam, the Persian, gives us the same an- 
swer : ^ — 

' ' Then to the Lip of this poor earthen Urn 
I lean'd, the Secret of my life to learn : 
And Lip to Lip, it murmur'd — ' While you live, 
Drink ! for, once dead, you never shall return. ' ' ' 

Is this the whole of life? Are we, as Panurge exclaims 
when he hears the Oracle, "as wise as we were last year?" 
Or is there a deeper meaning, the command that we shall 
not question the unknowable, but shall drink deep at the 
spring of nature, making the most of life, taking the good 
and the bad as they come, safe in the faith that God is? 

In this confused and ribald allegory, Rabelais led the way 
out of ancient superstition into modern science. More than 
this, he taught in it that the study of nature, observation of 
her laws, imitation of her methods, must be at the root of 

1 "His" (Rabelais's) "genius is like the sea, yielding both pearls 
and slime ; like nature, producing indifferently the nettle and the rose 
and pronouncing them both good. His science and his memory are as 
gigantic as his fancy ; medicine, law, theology, metaphysics, ethics, 
history, criticism, poetry, eloquence, he has read them all and has 
retained them all." — Paul Staffer, Laurence Stern; sa personne 
et ses ouvrages. (Paris, 1870.) 

^Bubdiyat, Fitzgerald's rendering. Quatrain XXXV. (Tenth 
American ed. ; Boston, 1885.") 



RABELAIS. 33 

every true system of education. He showed that the nature- 
spirit is the true spirit of good teaching. Ever since his 
day civilized mankind has been trying to learn this lesson 
of his and to apply it in the schools. For three centuries 
the leaders in education, under his indirect inspiration, have 
been slowly and painfully transforming the false x^edagogy 
of the cloister into the true pedagogy of out-of-doors. 
Writers and teachers, schools and universities, have been 
engaged in a halting and irregular struggle to transfer^, 
education from a metaphysical to a physical basis, to lead it 
away from a habit of deductive speculation into one of 
inductive research. This transfer Rabelais made boldly and 
at once. He did not, of course, elaborate the educational 
ideal of to-day, but he plainly marked out the lines upon 
which that ideal is framed. He taught truth and sim- 
plicity, he ridiculed hypocrisy and formalism, he denounced 
the worship of words, he demanded the study of things, he 
showed the beauty of intellectual health, of moral dis- 
cipline, of real piety. Best of all, he enunciated the supreme 
principle of nature, which is ordered freedom. 

The freedom which he advocated is not that of the 
individual, but that of the citizen. He taught, not license, 
but social freedom, in which the liberty of all is conditioned 
upon the restraint of each, and the liberty of each is secured 
only by the mutual restraint of all. The watchword of his 
Abbey of Theleme is not simply, in its interpretation, " Do 
what thou wilt"; it is, "Do what thou wilt, unselfishly." 
Upon free action modified by interdependence, the scheme 
of nature rests. From the solar system down to the tiniest 
molecule there is no departure from this principle. 

Eabelais was a leader in thought, therefore, because he 
recognized the supreme law to which is due the harmony 
of nature. He was a leader in education because he showed 
that it, too, must rest upon this law. He reconciled uni- 



34 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

versal liberty with universal restraint. He showed that 
the only true system of education must recognize fully the 
freedom of the individual while teaching the immutability 
of eternal law, and while seeking, ceaselessly, the workings 
of that law. He pointed out the only way along which 
humanity could progress. He outlined, in short, the career 
of civilization. 

Hence it is that no one whom we are to consider later 
deals so broadly with education as did Eabelais. His was 
a master mind that planned for all time and all men. His 
scheme is vague, it is impracticable; but it is the essence 
of^ which other systems are the inadequate fulfilment. 
Other men have taught as he did, but few have sketched so 
broadly, and fewer still have written so aptly and in a 
manner so suited to their time. It is a manner which, 
happily, is now not only obsolete, but impossible.^ Strong 
as are his writings, their direct sway was ended long ago. 
The work is still going on; its end is centuries ahead; 
Eabelais's own words, however, can influence it no longer. 
The books which, in too many instances, conceal his 
thoughts, are, to most decent persons, forever sealed.^ 

1 Mr. Besant, than whom Rabelais has no more earnest champion, 
says, in summing up his genius: " Cheerful, light-hearted, full of good 
sense, of faith, hope, and charity, an advocate of all good things, an 
enemy of all hypocrisies ; and yet he has written so that those who 
read him have to show a reason why they read him, so that those who 
praise him have to explain why they praise him ; so that no woman 
can ever read him, and so that priests have just cause to condemn 
him, independently of his derision and mockery of their pretensions. 
The pity of it ! " — Bahelais, 194. 

2 Those who are interested in Rabelais, but who are repelled by the 
indecency and obscurity of his writings, cannot do better than read 
the excellent volumes of M. Jean Fleury (Rabelais et ses oeuv.), who 
has succeeded in making, not only an intelligible and straightforward, 
but also a decent narrative out of the Rabelaisian books. He gives, 



RABELAIS. 35 

For general use, they are dead ; but the impulse which they 
gave is still a living and a growing force. 

furthermore, a satisfactory sketch of Kabelais's life, and, to his own 
judgments and explanations, adds those of many able commentators. 
The most readable English rendering of Rabelais is that of Mr. 
Walter Besaut {Headings in Babelais). 



36 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 



CHAPTER III. 

FRANCIS BACON. 

The Revolt against Classicism. 

rabelais a type ; his direct influence ; overthrow of mediie- 
valism ; classicism ; bacon j his career ; his fall ; his char- 
acter; his aspirations; the "great instauration " ; his 
other writings ; the inductive method ; his contributions 
to science ; to thought and method; his relations to con- 
temporary reformers ; his indictment of classicism ; his 
methodology; the "idols"; sense-training; emancipation 
FROM self ; prom words ; from dogmas ; bacon's principles ; 

they underlie modern EDUCATION ; HIS PEDAGOGY ; HIS PLANS 
FOR HIGHER LEARNING; A LEADER IN EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT ; 

HIS teachings; his intellect; his influence; his style. 

In placing Rabelais first among the leaders in the progress 
towards the ideal education, it should be understood that he 
is taken as a type — I believe, the best type — of that host 
of reformers who saw in education the chief hope of 
advance. Few of the leaders of the Renaissance failed to 
give weight to this factor of growth, but in none, it seems 
to me, is seen that grasp and prophecy of the power of right 
training which is found in Rabelais. His ideas, put forth 
from no pedagogic standpoint, anticipate all later writers 
upon education. His system, dimmed by obscenity and 
flippancy, is itself pure as crystal. It expands to embrace 
novel conditions J it may be analyzed to meet specific 
problems. 



FBANCIS BACON. 37 

To perceive — or to read into it — these varied qualities, 
however, required the light that came with later human 
growth. The immediate result of Eabelais's work was 
little more than a partial destruction of old errors and 
abuses. With the surest scalpel, satire, he laid bare the 
gangrene of mediaeval education ; in the universal language, 
humor, he called mankind to see and heal the sore. Here 
his direct influence ceased. The child whom he had freed 
from the scholastics fell at once into the hands of the 
classicists. They imprisoned him in the narrow range of 
the Greek and Latin civilizations, and human progress, 
paradoxically, tended towards a retrogression of two thou- 
sand years. Deep Avithin it were nurtured, however, the 
finer, enduring ideas of Kabelais, there to survive for two 
hundred years and to impel education, finally, into the 
light of the nineteenth century. 

Medisevalism, by Eabelais and his contemporaries, had 
been overthrown; in its place arose classicism. Against 
this lesser foe the battle was yet to be fought. The first 
effective champion of education in this new phase of its 
advancement was Erancis Bacon. 

To write of Bacon is to become a partisan, for in few 
men has the dual nature, the good and the evil, been more 
strongly marked.^ To dismiss his sins by attributing them 
to a subtle furtherance of his labors is as impossible as to 
condemn his patient work by founding it on vanity. To-day 
we say of him, "Admirable!" to-morrow, "Despicable!" 
His "meanness," 2 more than weakness, was a monstrous 
blemish; his greatness, more than talent, was sublimest 

1 Cf. Lord Campbell's antithetical and rather unjust summary of 
Bacon's career. Lives of the Lord Chancellors, opening of Ch. LI. 

2 Cf . Pope's too brilliant epigram : — 

" If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shin'd, 
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind! " 

— Essay on Man, Ep. IV. 



38 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

genius. He sounded the gamut of human experience fully, 
but with discord. The false note of his personality con- 
stantly offends. 

He was born to eminence.^ Son to Elizabeth's Lord 
Keeper of the Seal, he was, as in his boyhood he felicitously 
expressed it, " Two years younger than her Majesty's happy 
reign." ^ Through his mother's sister, he was nephew to 
Lord Burghley. With such a start, a youth of ordinary 
parts could scarcely fail of making a place for himself in an 
age so kind to its favorites. To Bacon's genius everything 
was possible. As a child, if anecdote be true, he is found 
already in the eye of favor. As little more than a boy, he 
takes high place in the Commons. In his eighteenth year, 
serving on a mission to France, he earns warm praise.^ But 
at the opening of his career his father dies, his expected 
income shrinks to a pittance, the Cecils, upon whose aid he 
had counted, forsake him, and he begins that sorry quest 
which is never wholly to be given up, the seeking of royal 
favor and preferment. With law as his profession, with 
science and letters as his well-marked avocation, he plies, 
instead, the unwholesome trade of a courtier. 

He attaches himself to Essex, then in high favor, furthers 
him with Elizabeth, — losing no chance to advance his own 
fortunes, — is privy, we fear, in some degree, to the rash and 
stupid plans of that hot-headed nobleman; and, when the 
crash comes, having privately and honestly, we must believe, 
tried to avert it, he accepts the certainty of Essex's doom, 

1 Francis, youngest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, by his second wife, 
Ann Cooke, was born at York House, London, Jan. 22, 1561. 

2 See this and other anecdotes in Dr. Rawley's Life of Bacon, which 
Spedding has prefixed to his edition of tlie Works. 

3 Sir Amias Paulet, in whose train Bacon went, commended him to 
the Queen as "of great hope, endued with many good and singular 
parts." — Fowler, Bacon, 3. 



FRANCIS BACON. 39 

deliberately arrays himself against his bosom friend, and, at 
the Queen's command, calmly sets in motion the machinery 
that forces him to the scaffold.^ This business of Essex is 
the sorriest fact in Bacon's career. ^ His later political fall 
and the acts which led to it are minor to this first moral 
degradation. And it avails him little. Elizabeth must 
have scorned the instrument of her wrath no less than she 
regretted its effect. The last fretful years of the friendless 
Queen are not ones in which to show favor to him who, by 
his legal skill, has deprived her of her latest favorite. 

Under James, however. Bacon anticipates better days, and 
he hastens to study, as he had conned those of Elizabeth, 
the foibles of the new monarch. Though these are legion, 
the easiest honorable avenue to favor leads through the pre- 
tentious pedantry of the King. Bacon hurries, therefore, 
to put forth the Advancement of Learning, in which, by a 
skilful presentation of its dignity, of its possibilities for 
progress under so wise a king, he judiciously calls attention 
to his plans, under favoring circumstances, for its advance- 
ment. 

This and other subserviencies have their effect. Slowly 
his political fortunes, for which through twenty-three years 
Bacon has striven and manoeuvred, are advanced. At the 
King's accession he is knighted, "gregarious,"^ with three 

1 See Abbott's Bacon and Essex. It is well to read Mr. Abbott's 
estimate of Bacon as given in this and in his Account of his Life and 
Works, before accepting the more favorable judgments of Mr. Spedding 
and Professor Fowler. 

2 Bacon himself characterizes like conduct in his essay Of Wisdom 
for a Man''s Self: " It is the wisdom of rats that will be sure to leave 
a house somewhat before it fall ; it is the wisdom of the fox that thrusts 
out the badger who digged and made room for him." 

3 See his letter of July 16, 1603, to Cecil: "For my knighthood, I 
wish the manner might be such as might grace me, since the matter 
will not ; I mean, that I might not be merely gregarious in a troop." 



40 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

hundred others; the next year he is made King's counsel; 
in 1607 he becomes solicitor-general; in the following year 
the clerkship of the Star Chamber, whose reversion he 
had long awaited, falls to him; in 1613 he reaches the 
attorney-generalship; and, finally, in 1618, at the age of 
fifty-eight, he is made lord chancellor. The three years 
following, during which he is created Baron Verulam and 
Viscount St. Albans, are the most prosperous of his life. 
Politically, he is one of the great figures of Europe; his 
Novum Organum, just published, gives him high rank among 
philosophers; his essays make him one of the lights of a 
brilliant literary age. 

But, in 1621, the retribution of his petty arts, his frantic 
striving, his time-serving, comes in full measure. The moral 
justice of his downfall is as magnificent as it is unusual. 
The charges of his indictment are, in the times of the 
Stuarts, insufficient to condemn him. They are but shadows 
of his real offence. His crime is having made himself the 
"King's man."^ He has carried the King's prerogative to 
its highest pitch. He has dealt in royal rather than in 
human justice. To please James, he has served Bucking- 
ham, and such service entails corruption.^ The spirit and 
temper which, later, will behead Charles, are abroad; they 
demand a victim, and Bacon is sacrificed. The weak King 
deserts him as Bacon had deserted Essex. He is tried on 
twenty-eight charges, throws himself on the mercy of the 
Lords in a letter half-proud, half -grovelling,^ but is sen- 
tenced heavily. Sick in body, harassed in mind, banished 
and disgraced, he must see, at last, the pitifulness of the 

1 "I have been," he says, appealing to James, " ever your man and 
counted myself but an usufructuary of myself, the property being yours." 

2 See, for example, Mr. Heath's report of his investigation of the 
Steward case. Spedding, Life, Appendix to Vol. VII. 579. 

3 Spedding, Life, VII. 242, 



FRANCIS BACON. 41 

splendor that lie has, with such pains, gained, and lost. He 
must see, too, the rank which might have been his, and 
stainlessly. But no. Driven temporarily from the sun- 
shine of the court, he retires to Gorhambury, and, while 
devoting himself to his rightful, but neglected work, has 
still a morbid thirst for royal favor. He bends himself, in 
the hope of appeasing James, to a long-planned History 
of England, finishing so much of it as to cover the reign of 
Henry VII. By this, and by servility to Villiers, he returns 
to partial favor, but never to office. After five years, after 
vainly suing for the provostship of Eton, he dies, in 1626, a 
broken and disappointed man. Having caught a cold in 
experimenting with snow, he expires, a martyr to science, but 
a sacrifice, in reality to inordinate and misdirected ambition. 
It seems to me that, both in his political life and on the 
side of the affections. Bacon exhibited the worst defect of 
the scientific habit. The analytical spirit, which to the ■ 
highest degree he possessed, spares nothing in its vivi- 
sections. Life, love, the dearest virtues, are to it but 
manifestations, normal or morbid, of natural phenomena. 
Therefore, they may be tabulated, experimented upon, dis- 
sected, maimed, and perverted without moral responsibility. 
Especially was this tendency strong in Bacon, for he believed 
in the ultimate simplicity of things, and sought, ever hope- 
fully, that "New Instrument" which should make of the 
investigation of nature a mechanical process. As with 
compasses the rudest hand can draw a perfect circle, so by 
his " Instrument " the commonest mind was to be empowered 
to search and know the infinite. To this end, to the devis- 
ing of this rule or plan, — whatever it was, — by which 
"Forms," or first causes,^ should be made clear, his whole V 

1 For a discussion of Bacon's use of the word "Form," see 
Ellis's Gen. Preface to the Philosophical Works, § 8 ; Spedding, 
Works, I. 



42 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

life, if we may credit liis repeated assertions, was bent. 
He was no mere physicist, although he advanced not far 
beyond the limits of visible things. Had time and power 
been his, he would have so perfected his " Instrument, " he 
believed, that the soul should be not less accessible than the 
body.^ To his bold mind, therefore, king, courtiers, friends, 
and enemies, were all food for experiment. 

The exceptionally great intellect, the genius which can, 
in a measure, comprehend eternity, must fall into an extreme 
attitude. Either it must conceive an abnormal respect 
towards moral principles, abhorring their infraction in the 
least degree as tending to an unbalance of the universe, or 
it must run to the opposite habit of regarding the niceties 
of ethics as vain and petty in the face of the immensity of 
time and the oblivion of eternity. Bacon, unconsciously, 
may have viewed his weaknesses from this latter stand- 
point. Furthermore, he never divested himself of the ele- 
vated spirit which impelled him to publish his first youthful 
production as the " Greatest Birth of Time." ^ To his mind, 
so far above the common, common laws of morality, he may 
have reasoned, were not to be applied ; the cause of science 
was bound up in him and would be checked by his delay; 
therefore his progress must not be stayed by petty obstacles 
of right and wrong, of duty and sincerity. Humanity 
could well bear, he may have thought, some slight out- 

1 " It may also be asked (in the way of doubt rather than objection) 
whether I speak of natural philosophy only, or whether I mean that 
the other sciences, logic, ethics, and politics, should be carried on by 
this method. Now I certainly mean what I have said to be understood 
of them all ; and as the common logic, which governs by the syllogism, 
extends not only to natural but to all sciences ; so does mine, also, 
which proceeds by induction, embrace everything." — Nov. Org. (Sped- 
ding, § cxxvii.). 

2 See his letter to Father Fulgentio ; Spedding, Life, VII. 531. 



FRANCIS BACON. 43 

rage at the hands of him who was to be its greatest 
benefactor.^ 

But it is with his intellectual personality rather than with 
his moral shortcomings that we are chiefly concerned. 
And, while this side of his nature is far brighter than the 
other, it is still to be taxed with the unfulfilment of wide 
plans, with the inadequate realization of high ideals. 

From his earliest years Bacon seemed aware of the defec- 
tiveness of the contemporary standards of knowledge.^ He 
was conscious of the fact that the Humanists, no less than 
the Scholastics, had not only failed to comprehend true 
learning, but had set up in place of it a false learning which 
was barren and mischievous. He saw that, by furnishing 
their minds and those of their successors with these spurious 
attainments, they were refusing entrance to the solid teach- 
ings of the natural world. He perceived that they were 
making themselves deaf, blind, and benumbed, in order to 
keep intact that Greek and Latin heritage, precious as far 
as it went, but wholly inadequate, which they had so recently 
reclaimed. His life-aim seems to have been to turn the 
learned world squarely about, to make it look forward 
instead of backward, outward into the face of nature, rather 
than inward into its dark and narrow self. Nature, not 
man, he perceived, must be the starting-point of inquiry; 
her laws, not man's vagaries, must be the object of study; 
her sure methods, not human guesswork, must be the model 
of research. 

1 See Fischer's analysis of Bacon's character on the thesis of its 
moral flexibility. 

2 " Whilst he was commorant in the university, about sixteen years 
of age, (as his lordship hath been pleased to impart unto myself), he 
first fell into the dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle ; not for the 
worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ever ascribe all high 
attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way." — Rawley, Life 
(Spedding, Works^ I.). 



44 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

With a courage born of genius, he set himself, therefore, 
to the task of finding the elements of nature, or, rather, of 
devising an instrument for their discovery. Stupendous, 
unending, is the work which he designed. We find it set 
forth in the introduction to the Great Instauration, we see 
a hope of realizing it in everything which Bacon wrote. 
He proposed : ^ — 

First, to show the present state of human knowledge, not 
only in those assured and settled fields of invention and 
discovery which his generation possessed, but in those " waste 
regions," or barren territories, which, though ready and fit 
to do so, the human mind had not yet taken the trouble 
to occupy. 

Secondly, to demonstrate how human reason should be 
trained to the further investigation of phenomena, and in 
what manner the principles of nature should be sought out ; 
in other words, to show "the true relation between the 
nature of things and the nature of the mind." 

Thirdly, to collect, sort out, and arrange the beliefs, 
experiences, and attainments of mankind, forming thereby a 
treasury or storehouse to "supply a suckling philosophy 
with its first food." 

Fourthly, to set up a sort of model of philosophical 
inquiry, selecting from the second and third parts such 
typical forms and methods as should strikingly present 
the whole image of learning; to articulate, in short, the 
skeleton of natural philosophy. 

Fifthly, to set forth the empirical results which he had 
already attained by the old methods of inquiry. This part 
would become superfluous and would disappear, however- 
when, 

Sixthly, he should have attained and demonstrated the 

1 Cf. Spedding, Works, IV. 22. 



FRANCIS BACON. 45 

true Philosophy of Nature, the aim and crown of all that 
had gone before. 

"The completion of this last part," he says,^ "is a thing 
both above my strength and beyond my hopes." 

Of this great scheme he did, indeed, complete but a frag- 
ment. The first portion, that describing the present state 
of knowledge, is partly covered by the Latin translation and 
enlargement of the Advancement of Learning.'^ The por- 
tion devoted to the use of the understanding is begun in 
his finest work, the unfinished Novum Organum.^ To the 
third part belong the Sylva Sylvarum, the Historla vitce et 
mortis, the Historia densi et rari, the Historia ventoruni, 
etc.^ To cover the fifth portion, we have but isolated 
treatises, incomplete observations, unfinished tabulations, 
tentative experiments, guess-work, rumor, and old-wives' 
tales. While, until the others should be completed, the 
fourth and sixth portions were, of course, impossible.^ 

1 Spedding, Works, IV. 32. 

^ Retranslated into English in Spedding, Works, IV. and V. 

3 Spedding, Works, IV. 

4 Spedding, Works, II. and V. 

5 It is a nice question whether or not Bacon's pitiful place-hunting, 
much as it hurt his character, really curtailed his achievements. Were 
his efforts fragmentary and incomplete because other cares and inter- 
ests pressed upon him, or were they so because his canvas was too 
large for human hand to fill ? Is it not probable that in the magnifi- 
cent sketch of the Great Instauration, the picture of human learning 
past, present, and to come, we have all that Bacon could have pro- 
duced, all that he needed to produce, to take the place that is his in 
the world's history ? Would the complete elaboration and filling in of 
his gigantic outline have been any more successful than are those 
portions which he did bring to his idea of perfection? The lesser 
treatises on physics, the enlargement of the Advancement of Learning, 
while rich and suggestive, while often flashing forward into the achieve- 
ment of to-day, are distinctly inferior to his more general writings. 
His intellect was of that colossal build which cannot cope with details. 



46 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

Fragmentary and chaotic as his work was, however, far as 
it fell below the most modest of his plans, he did enough to 
achieve enduring fame and to revolutionize the methods of 
philosophy and research. What more could ambition, even 
as insatiate as his, expect to realize?^ 

The goal which Bacon set for himself, the manner in which 
he proposed to reach it, necessitated his emphasis of the 
richness of the inductive, his exposure of the poverty of the 
deductive, processes, as a means to intellectual growth. He 
showed that the vice of the philosophies founded upon Aris- 
totle lies in their insufficiency. " It cannot be," he affirms,'^ 
" that axioms established by argumentation should avail for 
the discovery of new works ; since the subtlety of nature is 



His was one of the master minds which gather up the spirit of the 
past, glean from it the elements of progress, and set them forth, as on 
tables of stone, for future generations. Their schemes and hopes are 
too large for mortal achievement, but not too high for mortal aspira- 
tion. Just as in Rabelais we saw the utter impracticability of his 
system, so, with Bacon, the "Great Instrument," which he promises 
but never reveals, is too sacred for human use, but its quest is a true 
goal for the effort of mankind. Longfellow, imbued with the spirit of 
Richter, says, in Hyperion (Ch. VIII.): "It has become a common 
saying, that men of genius are always in advance of their age ; which 
is true. There is something equally true, yet not so common ; namely, 
that, of these men of genius, the best and bravest are in advance not 
only of their own age, but of every age. As the German prose-poet 
says, every possible future is behind them." 

1 " Is it nothing to have conceived, at the fit moment, the thought 
which would open a new era for science ? Is it nothing to have pre- 
dicted and well-nigh to have pre-delineated an immense revolution, at 
its dawning ? It seems to me that none before Bacon truly felt the 
grandeur of nature, and that it is this feeling which he disseminated 
along with an enthusiasm for science. Since he wrote, the genius of 
observation, its head raised, advances as an equal of the genius of 
thought." — De Remusat, Bacon, 397. 

2 Nov. Org., §§ xxiv. and xxv. 



FKANCIS BACON. 47 

greater many times over than the subtlety of argument. 
But axioms duly and orderly formed from particulars easily 
discover the way to new particulars and thus render sciences 
active. 

"The axioms now in use, having been suggested by a 
scanty and manipular experience and a few particulars of 
most general occurrence, are made for the most part just 
large enough to fit and take these in : and, therefore, it is no 
wonder if they do not lead to new particulars. And if some - 
opposite instance, not observed or not known before, chance ' 
to come in the way, the axiom is rescued and preserved by 
some frivolous distinction; whereas the truer course would 
be to correct the axiom itself." 

On the other hand. Bacon had fullest respect for deduc- 
tion, properly used. "For our road," he says,^ speaking of 
the investigation of phenomena, "does not lie on a level, 
but ascends and descends; first ascending to axioms, then 
descending to works." 

This scientific "road," this path of research which must 
go up from particulars as well as down from generals, was, 
in Bacon's day, an unfamiliar route, and it led into wholly 
unexpected fields of thought, whose fertility was astonish-' 
ing. The votaries of philosophy had become so accustomed 
to invoking their goddess from above, of looking for her 
descent from clouds of wordy speculations and hazy gen- 
eralizations, that it amazed and confused them to find that 
she must rise instead of descend, and that she can rise only 
out of an accumulation of mean and trivial facts. Through 
Bacon's teachings, however, they came to understand this 
truth, and, once comprehending it, they made rapid progress, 
revolutionizing the material and intellectual world. 

Bacon's own use of the inductive principle was not, how- 

1 Nov. Org., § ciii. 



48 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

ever, very fruitful. He seldom applied it either wisely or 
searchingly. He made, therefore, few valuable contribu- 
tions to exact science. He is not for a moment to be com- 
pared, in this respect, with contemporaries like Galileo, or 
Kepler, or even Gilbert. He was impatient of searching, 
he was bewildered, perhaps, by the mass of materials, 
valuable and trumpery, which he had diligently heaped 
together, by the elaborateness of the methods through which 
he proposed to sort them, by the very magnitude of the 
scientific scheme which he had himself created. The induc- 
tive principle yielded little in his hands ; but in the hands 
of those whom he — and he alone — inspired it produced 
the bountiful harvest of modern civilization. 

A gift to humanity greater, however, than the emphasis 
of the inductive method, greater than would have been the 
Instauration itself — that supreme Philosophy of Nature 
and that Instrument for its discovery — was the pointing 
out, by Bacon, of the immensity of the field of nature, his 
survey of its boundaries, his demonstration that within its 
area lie the beginning and the end of human knowledge, and 
his proof that mental strength and spiritual insight can 
come only as a result of its interpretation. "For," he 
writes,^ "man is but the servant and interpreter of nature: 
what he does and what he knows is only what he has 
observed of nature's order in fact or in thought; beyond 
this he knows nothing and can do nothing. For the chain 
of causes cannot by any force be loosed or broken, nor can 
nature be commanded except by being obeyed. And so 
those twin objects, human Knowledge and human Power, do 
really meet in one ; and it is from ignorance of causes that 
operation fails." 

How Herculean is the labor of this search for causes, how 

1 Spedding, Works, IV. 32. 



I^KANCIS BACON. 49 

endless is the toil which, the study of nature demands, we 
know only too well. With all our progress, all our advance 
in scientific knowledge, we see plainly enough that the 
enterprise is hardly under way. We are slightly in advance 
of Bacon, but final knowledge is immeasurably in advance 
of us. This sixteenth century philosopher had a dim hope 
of accomplishing a work which, since his time, ten genera- 
tions of laborers have only just begun. 

But in the very magnitude of the task which Bacon pre- 
sented, and in the magniloquence of its presentation, lay its 
value. Had it been less ambitious, it would have loomed 
up less massively through the contemporary fog of scientific 
ignorance, and would not have given, as it has, to learning a 
new goal, to education a new beacon. He who would make 
head against custom and the drift of his time, must make a 
noise and a promise of wonders. Else will he be wholly 
overborne. Because of Bacon's large view of things, he 
saw, beyond petty applications and specific details, the 
final goal towards which learning must strive. Because of 
his large manner of presenting his views, the world, both 
learned and vulgar, saw too this goal, and changed its course 
accordingly. 

Bacon was almost alone in understanding the real intel- 
lectual needs of the time.^ Luther and like leaders of 
reform unmasked the Schoolmen and exhibited the poverty 

1 " . . . the history of human knowledge points out nobody of 
whom it can be said, that, placed in the situation of Bacon, he would 
have done what Bacon did ; — no man whose prophetic genius would 
have enabled him to delineate a system of science which had not yet 
begun to exist ! — who could have derived the knowledge of what ought 
to he from what vms not, and who could have become so rich in wis- 
dom, though he received from his predecessors no inheritance but their 
errors." — John Playfair, The Progress of Mathematical and Physi- 
cal Science, since the Eevival of Letters in Europe, Part I., § ii. 



50 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

and meanness of mediaeval learning ; but, with the exception 
of Kabelais, they turned back to the ancients for light and 
inspiration. Luther, advocating in his vigorous fashion, 
as no one had yet maintained, the necessity for popular 
education,^ upheld, nevertheless, the supremacy of the dead 
languages, and would train peasants by teaching them 
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Melanchthon, the educational 
leader of Protestantism, busied himself chiefly with the 
niceties of scholarship.^ Montaigne, gently and placidly, 
as was his nature, chid pedantry, deprecated scholasticism, 
advocated no education rather than one corrupting to the 
moral nature, and, in his rambling way, was a sort of 
Renaissance Rousseau ; ^ but he was far too mild to figure 
as a leader. Sturm of Strasburg and his docile pupil 
Ascham were frankly and narrowly grammarians.* Then 

1 Writing, " I blush for us Christians when I hear it said, ' Instruc- 
tion is good for priests, but unnecessary for the laity.' Such speeches 
justify too well what other nations say of us Germans. ... I tell 
you we must everywhere have schools for our boys and girls, to the 
end that the man shall be fit for his duties and the woman for direct- 
ing her household and rearing, in a Christian way, her children." 
Quoted from Lihellus de institue7idis pueris ; magistratihus et senatori- 
bus civitatum Germanice Martinus Luther, by Compayre, Hist. crit. 
des doct. de Veduc. en France, I. 152. 

2 "He was, above all else," says Compayre {Hist, of Fed., 113), "a 
professor of Belles- Lettres.^'' 

3 Cf. Montaigne and Locke, p. 119. 

* Not but what both these men had many excellent and progressive 
ideas on the subject of education. Sturm's school was one of the 
most famous of his time ; Ascham' s influence upon his royal pupils 
and, through them, upon the standards and methods of English teach- 
ing, was excellent. But Ascham expresses, undoubtedly, the highest 
ideals of both when he says {8cholemaster, Book II.), " If a good 
student would bend himselfe to read diligently ouer Tullie, and with 
him also at the same tyme, as diligently Flato, and Xenophon, with 
his bookes of Philosophic, Isocrates, and Demosthenes with his ora- 



FRANCIS BACON. 51 

unsurpassed as such, but with little aim beyond a perfect 
accidence. As for Erasmus, what has been said of his 
literary, might well be applied to his mental atmosphere; 
he "thought in Latin, got angry in Latin, loved and hated 
in Latin. Never did a literary idea come to him in Dutch 
or German. His nurse's speech gave him current idiom for 
converse with his servant: but, beyond that sort of uses, 
his mind could take shape only through Latin signs." ^ 

The list might be indefinitely extended of these good and 
zealous men, these men of wide mental horizon, who were 
yet not far enough in advance of their age to understand, to 
again quote the ever-felicitous Bacon, that " when men have 
once made over their judgments to others' keeping, and 
(like those senators whom they called Pedarii) have agreed 
to support some one person's opinion, from that time they 
make no enlargement of the sciences themselves, but fall to 
the servile office of embellishing certain individual authors 
and increasing their retinue." ^ 

To these blind followers of antiquity, Aristotle was the 
god of education, and Cicero, his prophet. Having unearthed 
the fragments of Greek and Latin learning, having rid them 

tions, and Aristotle with his Rhetorickes : . . . and not onelie write 
out the places diligentlie, and lay them together orderlie, but also to 
conferre them with skilf ull iudgment by those few rules which I haue 
expressed now twice before : if that diligence were taken, if that 
order were vsed, what perfite knowledge of both the tonges, what 
readie and pithie vtterance in all matters, what right and deepe iudge- 
ment in all kinde of learnyng would follow, is scarce credible to be 
beleued. 

"These bookes, be not many, nor long, nor rude in speach, nor 
meane in matter, but, next the Maiestie of Gods holie word, most 
worthie for a man, the louer of learning and honestie, to spend his 
life in." 

1 Nisard, Erasme {Benaissance et reforme), Ch. XII. 198. 

2 Preface to the Great Insiauratiou (Spedding, Works, IV. 14). 



52 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

of tlie barbarities of the Schoolmen, having devised means of 
bringing these precious inheritances before the learned and 
the vulgar, they rested content. But Bacon did not. He 
saw clearly the limitations of the classical wisdom. " An- 
tiquity," he declares,^ "deserveth that reverence, that men 
should stand thereupon and discover what is the best way; 
but when the discovery is well taken, then to make progres- 
sion. And to speak truly," he continues, ^^ Antiquitas 
sceculi juventus mundi. These times are the ancient times, 

:::'when the world is ancient, and not those which we account 
ancient, ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from 
ourselves." 

He leaned upon the old learning, using it as a sort of 
fulcrum for the new. He realized that the moving of the 
world was yet to be done, and in his " ISTew Instrument " he 
believed to see the lever. ^ The warring sects of the older 
philosophies ignored, to a great degree, facts and things, 
and reasoned in circles, from themselves back to themselves. 
They anticipated the methods of those political economists 
who deduce untenable propositions from the fallacious pre- 
mise of a perfect, solitary man. Learning for learning's 
sake was the scholastic princij^le ; the elaboration of useless 

I learning was their dismal practice. 

But Bacon scorned so narrow a position. Enumerating the 
"peccant humours" which "discredit learning," he says:^ 

^ Adv. of Learn., Book I., § V. 1 (Wriglit). See also, Nov. Org., 
§ Ixxxiv. 

-It should be remembered that the real "New Instrument," that 
by which the world is being moved in such a breathless way with us, 
is not the one which Bacon, vainly indeed, but ever persistently, tries 
to elucidate. It is the, to him, secondary instrument by which his, the 
elusive, was to have been discovered. The real " New Instrument " 
is, of course, the patient mind persistent in its study of nature. 

^Adv. of Learn., Book! (Spedding, Works, III. 294). 



FRANCIS BACON. 53 

" But the greatest error of all is the mistaking or misplacing 
of the last or furthest end of knowledge. For men have 
entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes 
upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite ; sometimes 
to entertain their minds with variety and delight; some- 
times for ornament and rej)utation ; and sometimes to enable 
them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times 
for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a 
true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of 
men. . . . But as both heaven and earth do conspire and 
contribute to the use and benefit of man; so the end" (of 
knowledge) " ought to be ... to separate and reject vain 
speculations, and whatsoever is empty and void, and to pre- 
serve and augment whatsoever is solid and fruitful: that 
knowledge may not be as a courtesan, for pleasure and 
vanity only; or as a bond woman, to acquire and gain to 
her master's use; but as a spouse, for generation, fruit, and 
comfort." 

To Bacon knowledge is always in process, never complete. 
The discovery of new truths makes necessary new methods; 
as man grows he finds ever more to learn, and nothing, with 
him, is final; no advance serves except as a resting place 
and spying point from which to press on to new discoveries. 
The ancients and scholastics, however, accepted their hasty 
generalizations as immutable truths, considered them, arbi- 
trarily, as the beginning and end of elemental knowledge, 
and, like spiders, as Bacon calls them,^ evolved nature out 
of themselves. As they had no means, even had they 
wished, to test either their premises or their conclusions, 
each philosopher could not fail to bring forth an individual 
philosophy, alien to all others. "Hence," observes Bacon, ^ 

1 Nov. Org.^ § xcv. 

2 Preface to the Great Instauration (Spedding, Works^ IV. 15). 



54 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

"the wisdom which we have derived principally from the 
Greeks is but like the boyhood of knowledge, and has the 
characteristic property of boys : it can talk, but it cannot 
generate ; for it is fruitful of controversies, but barren of 
works." 

Like these Greeks, he believed in the ultimate simplicity 
of nature. He was convinced that the infinitely complex of 
the universe ^ is founded upon the absolutely simple, and 
deduces therefrom his doctrine of " Forms, " or first causes. 
But he consistently maintained, as the Greeks did not, that 
these elements cannot be assumed. They must be delved 
for, and the digging is a task of centuries. " I have made 
a beginning, " he declares in the plan of his Great Instaura- 
tion,^ "a beginning, as I hope, not unimportant: — the for- 
tune of the human race will give the issue ; — such an issue, 
it may be, as in the present condition of things and men's 
minds cannot easily be conceived or imagined. For the 
matter in hand is no mere felicity of speculation, but the 
real business and fortunes of the human race." 

Having turned his face to the West, by denying the 
supremacy and adequacy of antiquity, he begins, a philo- 
sophic Columbus,^ to chart the unfamiliar seas that lie 
before him. As clearly as he sees the errors of the past, 

1 Or, as he regarded it, of the terrestrial system. He never accepted 
the Copernican theory. He says, e.g., in the Descriptio Glohi Intel- 
lectualis (Spedding, Works, V. 517), " . . .in the system of Coper- 
nicus there are found many and great inconveniences ; for both the 
loading of the earth with a triple motion is very incommodious, and 
the separation of the sun from the company of the planets with which 
it has so many passions in common, is likewise a difficulty . . . and 
some other assumptions of his, are the speculations of one who cares 
not what fictions he introduces into nature, provided his calculations 
answer.' ' 

2 Spedding, Works, IV. 32. 
3Cf. Nov. Org., § cxiv. 



FRANCIS BACON. 65 

he anticipates the snares of the future. He knows that 
the pursuit of nature is a task far heavier than that of 
the barren word-philosophies. "The subtlety of nature is 
greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and 
understanding," he declares.^ And again,^ "It is idle to 
expect any great advancement in science from the super- 
inducing and engrafting of new things upon old. We must 
begin anew from the very foundations, unless we would 
revolve forever in a circle with mean and contemptible 
progress." But the only tool with which man can explore 
this subtle nature and lay this foundation, is his own mind. 
It is essential, therefore, to examine the mind and determine 
its competence. 

In this analysis Bacon evolves his famous figure of the 
four Idols which perplex the human mind. This quaint 
classification is the key to his philosophy. 

"There are four classes of Idols," he writes,^ "which 
beset men's minds. To these, for distinction's sake, I have 
assigned names, — calling the first class Idols * of the Tribe; 
the second, Idols of the Den ; the third, Idols of the Market- 
place; the fourth, Idols of the Theatre." 

" The Idols of the Tribe have their foundation in human 
nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a 

1 Nov. Org., § x. 
^Ibid., § xxxi. 

3 Ibid., § xxxix. et seq. 

4 By idola, usually translated idols, Bacon does not mean false gods, 
but distortions of the true image of nature. "The human Mind," he 
says (jSFov. Org., Pickering's ed., London, 1850, p. 17), "resembles 
those uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different 
objects, from which rays are emitted, and distort and disfigure them." 
In the preceding aphorism (xl.) he says, "The doctrine of Idols bears 
the same relation to the Interpretation of Nature as that of the con- 
futation of sophisms does to common logic." See, in this connection, 
Hallam, Lit. of Europe, Part III., Ch. III., § 60. 



56 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of 
things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the 
sense as of the mind, are according to the measure of the 
individual and not according to the measure of the universe. 
And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, 
receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature 
of things by mingling its own nature with it." 

"The Idols of the Den are the idols of the individual 
man. For every one (besides the errors common to human 
nature in general) has a cave or den of his own, which 
refracts and discolors the light of nature ; owing either to 
his own proper and peculiar nature ; or to his education and 
conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and 
the authority of those whom he esteems and admires ; or to 
the differences of impressions, according as they take place 
in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indif- 
ferent and settled; or the like." 

"There are also idols formed by the intercourse and 
association of men with each other, which I call Idols of 
the Market-place. . . . For it is by discourse that men 
associate; and words are imposed according to the appre- 
hension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit 
choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. 
Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some 
things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, 
by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force 
and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confu- 
sion, and lead men away into numberless empty controversies 
and idle fancies." 

"Lastly, there are idols which have immigrated into 
men's minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and 
also from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call 
Idols of the Theatre; because in my judgment, all the 
received systems are but so many stage-plays, represent- 



FRANCIS BACON. 57 

ing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic 
fashion." 

Under these four heads maybe gathered Bacon's wonder- 
ful contributions to the advancement of real learning, and, 
therefore, to the progress of right education. In his 
Novum Organum, in his Advancement of Learning, in its 
enlarged Latin version, the De Augmentis Scientiarum, in 
his lesser works prefiguring and amplifying these, we never 
lose sight of the fundamental principles upon which the 
warfare against these idols must be carried on. 

The Idols of the Tribe, the inherent imperfection of 
humanity, will yield only to infinite patience of effort, to 
infinite diligence of investigation. I say infinite, because 
human weakness is such that there must always remain 
much in nature that is above man's comprehension, beyond 
his power of investigation. His senses are naturally gross 
and imperfect; presumably there is a limit to their cultiva- 
tion and refinement. Beyond this limit knowledge cannot 
go. For, however high our imaginations and aspirations 
may take us, however exalted may be our beliefs, our 
knowledge must stop at the confines of our senses; and 
however far beyond these our speculations go, they must, to 
have any human value, spring from and be anchored to those 
exact cognitions which can be attained only through sight, 
hearing, touch, taste, and smell. 

It is because of this that modern education lays, properly, 
such stress upon the training of the senses. Since, directly 
or indirectly, all that we know, all that we think, all that 
we believe, must rest finally upon the sensual powers, it is 
of the first importance that those powers should be properly 
trained and directed. To expect the highest intellectual 
and moral attainments in a man whose senses have been 
left entirely without education, is to ask an impossibility. 
It is to demand the most exquisite workmanship without 



68 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

providing proper tools or permitting adequate apprentice- 
ship. 

The Idols of the Den, man's personal bias, can be escaped 
only by self-effacement. Everything that man sees, every- 
thing that he thinks, must be submitted, sooner or later, to 
an exact scrutiny. The researches and speculations of each 
must be tried by the investigations and beliefs of all, simi- 
lar studies must be compared, diverse results must be 
reconciled, in order that the personal element in research 
shall be wholly eliminated and the inter-relationships of 
phenomena established, so to speak, externally, in order 
that these phenomena may be recognized, finally, as facts, 
not as reflections of the individual who studies them. 

Similarly, in teaching, the chief aim must be to take the 
child, by slow and gradual steps, out of the self by which 
his infant consciousness is bounded, into that world of 
nature by contact with which he is to be developed; and, 
thence, back again into that subjective territory wherein 
must be cultivated his ethical and spiritual tendencies. The 
child's early education must be mainly extensive in order 
that his later training may be more strongly intensive ; for 
only by a wide objective experience is he fitted to undertake 
that subjective self-discipline which moral education entails. 

The Idols of the Market-place, man's poverty of outward 
expression, may be overcome by an appeal to things, by a 
breaking loose from words; action, not disputation. 

Under this head Bacon emphasized most strongly the 
defects in the prevailing spirit of education. An empty 
worship of words had produced the barren quibbles of 
scholasticism. For this the classicists had substituted a 
philology scarcely more fruitful. Names without meaning, 
ideas without connection, distinctions in which the things 
distinguished had no substance, speculations whose bases 
were unknown, — these made up the Barmecide feast offered 



FRANCIS BACON. 59 

to the children of Bacon's day. In place of it he opened to 
them the boundless field of nature, and the endless oppor- 
tunity for real education which its exploration gives. 

The Idols of the Theatre, man's slavery to passing doc- 
trines, will fall with the dislodging of all sects and dogmas. 
He who interprets nature must be absolutely free. It is 
this principle of intellectual and moral freedom, so easy to 
apply, — now that we have been taught how, — to the higher 
education, which is so difficult of right application in the 
primary teaching. It is upon this point, perhaps more than 
upon any other, that pedagogical thought and experiment are, 
at this moment, focussed. 

These truths, in their many aspects, these fundamentals 
of a sound, progressive learning. Bacon showed forth as 
none before had displayed them. About them, as main 
propositions, his philosophical writings may be grouped. 
Upon these truths, moreover, modern teaching founds its 
endeavor. Patient study of the child, active investigation 
by the child, self -emancipation on the part of both teacher 
and pupil, self-conducted and unbiassed experiment upon 
things and logical inference from facts, entire liberty of 
thought and opinion, — these are the corner stones of the 
New Education. Kindergartens, object-lessons, laboratory 
work, nature-study, the mechanic arts, — all are concrete 
expressions of these fundamental principles. 

Upon these Bacon, stands, a leader of modern thought. 
Natural education, which is but the searching and following 
of nature, derives from this man, as from no one before him, 
the impulse of its growth. In outlining the methods and 
aims of scientific research, he laid down, at the same time, 
the laws of education. 

But he gave little heed to the specific problems of peda- 
gogics. His gaze was too wide to busy itself with details. 
He says, it is true, in the sixth book of the Latin transla- 



60 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

tion of the Advancement of Learning,'^ "As for the peda- 
gogical part " (of the transmission of knowledge) " the 
shortest way would be, consult the schools of the Jesuits ; 
for nothing better has been put in practice." But to per- 
ceive how little he knows of these schools, we need but to 
read further among the "hints" that he "gives as usual." 
He says : " For the order and manner of teaching, I would 
say, first of all, — avoid abridgment and a certain precocity 
of learning, which makes the mind over-bold, and causes 
great proficiency rather in show than in fact. Also let some 
encouragement be given to the free exercise of the pupils' 
minds and tastes; I mean if any of them, besides perform- 
ing the prescribed exercises, shall steal time withal for 
other purposes to which he is more inclined, let him not be 
checked. Observe, moreover (what x^erhaps has not hitherto 
been remarked), that there are two ways of training and 
exercising and preparing the mind, which proceed in opposite 
directions. The one begins with the easier tasks, and so 
leads on gradually to the more difficult ; the other begins by 
enforcing and pressing the more difficult, that when they are 
mastered, the easier ones may be performed with pleasure. 
For it is one method to begin swimming with bladders, 
which keep you up, and another to begin dancing with heavy 
shoes which weigh you down. Nor is it easy to tell how 
much a judicious intermixture of these methods helps to 
advance the faculties of the mind and body." 

Now this is exactly contrary to the methods of the 
Jesuits.'^ The pupils of the Society of Jesus were never, 
intellectually, free, however easy and complaisant may have 
been the rule of their masters. The Jesuit teachers per- 
mitted range of study; their admirable method was not so 

1 Ch. IV. (Spedding, Works, IV. 494). 

2 For an exceedingly just and temperate analysis of the Jesuit teach- 
ing, see Compayre, Hist, of Ped., 139. 



FKANCIS BACON. 61 

rigid that it forbade excursions outside its limits, but this 
authorized ranging was frivolous and barren. The brighter 
pupils were encouraged to an enlarged exercise of their 
minds, but, unfortunately, this exercise was a mere beating 
of the air with the weapons of syllogism, a fencing with 
shadowy words. 

Abridgment, too, which Bacon so strongly condemns, ^- 
was a corner stone of the Jesuit teaching. The elegant 
superficiality at which it aimed was built upon extracts 
from and summaries of the vast range of human thought. 
This surface-teaching gave that "precocity of learning" 
which inflated their pupils with a tenuous vapor of false 
knowledge. 

^V The Jesuits were, purposely, behind their age; they were 
degenerate heirs of scholasticism, not even loving learning 
except as it gave them spiritual gain. They hated the 

I spirit of progress which filled the world about them, they, 
wanted civilization and thought to stay their courses at the 
point where the Society of Jesus could control them. They 
helped in the resurrection of the ancient authors, they 
systematized them most wonderfully, but they deliberately 
crushed and stifled all that was intellectually best in their 
pupils, and did all they could to render the minds under 
their tuition unfit for that very work of investigation which 
Bacon saw was vital to the progress of the world. 

As, unfortunately, in so many things. Bacon looked only 
at the outside of Loyola's system. He knew it was better 
than the chaos which preceded it; he saw its splendor, its 
exactness, its immediateness of result, and he accepted 
it, sublimely ignorant that it was hostile to him at every 
point. 

In questions of higher education, however, he has much 

1 E.g., in the Advancement of Learning, Book II., § ii. 4. "... the 
corruptions and moths of history, wliich are epitomes." 



62 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

to suggest. In Salomon's House ^ he depicts an academy 
of arts and sciences, in the Advancement of Learning, he 
outlines,^ clearly, the conditions upon which, alone, true 
intellectual greatness for a country can be achieved. 

Salomon's House, the heart of the splendid government 
of the "New Atlantis," is, as Bacon describes it, not only 
a place for discovery and invention of every imaginable sort, 
but also a museum of all known products, processes, and 
"engines," a vast experiment station for inquiries concern- 
ing physics, hygiene, agriculture, zoology, pharmacy, metal- 
lurgy, and the other myriad processes of applied science. 
So far as his knowledge went, he seems to have forgotten 
nothing in the planning of it, and, in a crude way, he fore- 
tells many modern discoveries and inventions.^ In the 
thirty-six "fellows" whose duties he describes, he plainly 
fore-imagines such an association for scientific research as 
was realized, eighteen years later, in the germ of the Royal 
Society.^ The travellers, or Merchants of Light, the Depre- 
dators who glean from books, the Mystery Men who collect 
the experiments of others, the Pioneers who experiment for 
themselves, the Compilers who tabulate experiments and 
researches, and, finally, the Benefactors, Lamps, Inocula- 
tors, and Interpreters, who, out of the mass of materials 
collected by the others, devise and discover, in their several 
capacities, new benefits and knowledge for humanity, — all 
these fanciful officers are to find their prosaic successors in 

1 In The New Atlantis (Spedding, Works, III. 156). 

2 See Spedding, Works, III. pp. 322-328, and IV. pp. 284-290. 

3 There is little to amaze us in this, since in Bacon's time, no less 
than in our own, the longing imagination could foretell many things 
that the brain and hand seemed, at the time, powerless to realize. 

4 The Royal Society was not definitely established until 1660, and 
did not receive its charter until 1682, but its foundations were laid in 
1645. 



FRANCIS BACON. 63 

the members of the many learned bodies founded upon the 
model of the Royal Society. 

In the introduction to the second book of the Advance- 
ment of Learning, Bacon discourses upon the three agents 
for the preservation and furthering of knowledge 5 namely, 
universities, libraries, and the "persons of the learned." 
He advocates the founding of a real university, one not 
alone dedicated to the professions, but ''left free to the 
arts and sciences at large " ; adequate salaries and proper 
rewards to teachers and investigators; an enlargement of 
the scope of experimentation through the establishment of 
laboratories in almost every branch of learning; the con- 
tinual revision of the methods and aims of teaching in order 
to conform them to the needs of the times ; the substitution, 
for the mutual jealousy and distrust of the seats of learning, 
of "more intelligence mutual between the universities of 
Europe " ; and, finally, a systematic inquiry into the state 
of knowledge, a "census of the sciences," such as Bacon 
himself purposed carrying out in the Great Instauration. 
These large and solid plans are only beginning to be realized 
to-day, nearly three centuries after. 

Without making, therefore, any immediate contribution > 
to pedagogics beyond these wide prophecies for the higher ^^ 
education,^ without contributing many things of value to 
exact learning, without making, either to physics, to law, 
or to history, — his chosen fields for particular inquiry, — any 
direct additions of great moment in the progress of civiliza- 
tion. Bacon yet did that which makes his career one of 
inestimable worth to the world. At a time when men were 
in a ferment of growth and mental productiveness, when the 

1 Unless we except the fragmentary Letter and Discourse to Sir 
Henry Savill, touching Helps for the Intellectual Powers (Spedding, 
Works, VII. 97), and certain of the Essays, particularly that immor- 
tal one, Of Study. 



64 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

conditions were right for the rapid breeding of new ideas, 
new discoveries, new principles, he marked out, clearly and 
justly, the direction in which those ideas, discoveries, and 
principles should be sought, the way in which they could be 
made available. He crystallized, so to speak, the energetic 
but amorphous mass of thought, speculation, and inquiry 
which the Renaissance had produced. By doing this he 
made progress not only surer but more easy ; ^ for when it 
is shown what we ought to do and in what manner it should 
be done, more than half the task of any investigation is 
accomplished. While Bacon pointed out, lucidly, the right 
aim of human endeavor, he indicated, no less clearly, the 
path by which it could be reached. He showed, among 
other truths, — 

That civilization must look forward, not backward; that 
it must be a growth out of the conditions of to-day, not a 
fixed state modelled on the past. 

That it must depend upon living nature, not upon dead 
antiquity, for light and guidance. 

That it must rest upon investigation, not upon specula- 
tion. 

That investigation must be upwards from observed facts, 
not downwards from arbitrary premises. 

That man, in his researches, must be ever on the watch 
against himself ; that he must learn to distinguish universal 
truth from human error, general principles from personal 
prejudice, facts from names, the eternal harmony of God 
from the partial and warped theories of men. 

Bacon and his writings mark, plainly, the beginning of 



1 On the effect of Bacon's ideas, see an interesting paper by Macvey 
Napier (Trans, of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, VIII. 373), Be- 
marks Illustrative of the Scope and Influence of the Philosophical 
Writings of Lord Bacon. 



FRANCIS BACON. 65 

a new era in human thought and methods of study. ^ Tl^ey 
inaugurate, therefore, a marked advance in pedagogics ; for, 
however strongly they may cling to old forms and symbols, 
educational ideas follow, closely and accurately, the prog- 
ress of civilization. He who leads an advance in modes 
of thought must be, perforce, a prophet of educational 
growth. In breaking away from classicism, in codifying, 
if I may use the term, the inductive processes, in propound- 
ing the true aim of learning, Bacon did such service to the 
cause of right education as few, if any, before or since, have 
been able to accomplish. All the advance that has been 
made in education has been upon the lines which he laid 
down. 

His was not the strongest intellect of his age, but it was 
the most human. Others thought more learnedly than he ; 
many others more accurately. In various directions he was 
singularly ignorant and blind. But, besides that marvellous 
mental grasp of his, which made it possible for him to plan 
the Great Instauration, and to finish so much of it as was 



1 "Two men stand out, 'the masters of those who know,' without 
equals up to their time, among men — the Greek Aristotle and the 
Englishman Bacon. They agree in the universality and comprehen- 
siveness of their conception of human knowledge ; and they were 
absolutely alone in their serious practical ambition to work out this 
conception. . . . We shall never again see an Aristotle or a Bacon, 
because the conditions of knowledge have altered. Bacon, like Aris- 
totle, belonged to an age of adventure, which went to sea little know- 
ing whither it went, and ill furnished with knowledge and instruments. 
. . . This new world of knowledge has turned out in many ways very 
different from what Aristotle and Bacon supposed, and has been con- 
quered by implements and weapons very different in precision and 
power from what they purposed to rely on. But the combination of 
patient and careful industry, with the courage and divination of genius, 
in doing what none had done before, makes it equally stupid and idle 
to impeach their greatness." — Church, Bacon, pp. 190 and 193. 



66 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

necessary to make its scope comprehensible, he had the rare 
faculty of making learning popular without making it cheap. ^ 
This is a quality essential to enduring influence. However 
high the great intellect and soul may soar, their flight is 
barren unless they keep contact with earth, and bring down 
their ecstasies to the level of common men. Intellectually 
as well as socially, the recluse is an anomaly in the civilized 
world. However abundant and valuable may be the dis- 
coveries of the individual, they can be quickened only by 
contact with humanity at large. From this point of view, 
Bacon's unhappy love of authority was, perhaps, not unfor- 
tunate. It gave him added sway, it kept him before men, 
made them curious about him, and assured that attention 
to his writings which he did not fail to solicit. 

Having gained attention, he easily kept it; for, quite 
apart from the matter of his writings, his manner was 
captivating even to Englishmen of the earlier Jacobean 
days, when the language was fresh and when the few men 

1 With all the faults of Macaulay's estimate of Bacon, no one has 
found better words in which to describe his influence than these: 
" Great and various as the powers of Bacon were, he owes his wide and 
durable fame chiefly to this, that all those powers received their direc- 
I tion from common sense. His love of the vulgar useful, his strong 
■ sympathy with the popular notions of good and evil, and the openness 
with which he avowed that sympathy, are the secret of his influence. 
There was in his system no cant, no illusion. ... In his opinions 
on all . . . subjects he was not a Stoic, nor an Epicurean, nor an 
Academic, but what would have been called by Stoics, Epicureans, and 
Academics, ... a mere common man. And it was precisely because 
he was so that his name makes so great an era in the history of the 
world. It was because he dug deep that he was able to pile high. It 
was because, in order to lay his foundations, he went down into those 
parts of human nature which lie low, but which are not liable to change, 
that the fabric which he reared has risen to so stately an elevation, and 
stands with such immovable strength. " Lord Bacon, ^66. See, also, 
Fowler, Bacon, 197. 



FRANCIS BACON. 67 

who wrote well, wrote marvellously well. Bacon's style is 
wonderfully flexible; in the very cumbersomeness of many 
of his passages there is a ponderous dignity which gives 
weight to what he says. It is bald or sonorous, pithy or 
elaborate, as the theme demands. Especially is it homely. 
He refuses no illustration because of its meanness, but 
transfigures it by the genius of his diction. Through this 
homeliness his message to mankind was made immediately 
available. His high and remote ideas were, by this means, 
transmuted into the coin of common speech and brought into 
the currency of popular thought. Ko author, except Shake- 
speare, is so quotable. Fanciful, and even grotesque, as 
many of his similes and metaphors are, they have the power 
of wakening the train of thought which he wished to stimu- 
late. Truly, as he fulsomely said of James, ^ his "manner 
of speech is prince-like, flowing as from a fountain, and yet 
streaming and branching itself into nature's order, full of 
facility and felicity, imitating none, and inimitable by any." 

And we may well apply to him, also, what he said 
further 2 of his king, that he "standeth invested of that 
triplicity, which in great veneration was ascribed to the 
ancient Hermes; the power and fortune of a king, the 
knowledge and illumination of a priest, and the learning 
and universality of a philosopher." 

From this pedestal of rank, of authority, of wisdom, and 
of genius, Bacon pointed out the modern road which, each 
generation less haltingly, — because the education of every 
succeeding generation has advanced a little towards Bacon's 
ideal, — mankind has been, since his time, slowly following. 

1 Adv. of Learn., Book I. 1[ 2. , ^ Ibid. 



68 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 



CHAPTER IV. 

COMENIUS. 
The Revolt against Feudalism. 

FOUR PATHS OF EDUCATION ; BACON'S ALONE EXPANSIVE ; COMENIUS ; 
A FOLLOWER OF BACON ; VIVES AND RATICH; COMENIUS'S CAREER ; 

HIS writings; his weaknesses; the "great didactic"; its 
general principles ; its prophecy op the public school ; its 
encyclopedism ; its four school-periods ; the principle of 

METHOD ; other PRINCIPLES ; OTHER TEXT-BOOKS ; THE " JANUA " ; 

the "orbis pictus" ; origin of his principles and methods; 
his expansion of earlier ideas ; his contributions to the 
educational ideal. 

Dating from the Revival of Letters, education may be 
said to have taken four paths: through Luther towards 
a common school that should fit for a knowledge and inter- 
pretation of the Bible; through Melanchthon, Sturm, and 
Ascham, to a classicism which found in the Greek and 
Latin authors all knowledge other than that inspired; 
through the Jesuits to an ordered discipline of the intellect; 
through Bacon towards a study of nature as the source of 
knowledge and the manifestation of the Divine, The tend- 
ency of each of these paths was good. In their beginning, 
the systems following them were, as far as they went, excel- 
lent. We cannot overestimate the effect of Luther's clamor 
for popular education, narrow as that education proved itself 
to be. In rescuing and purifying the classic texts, the 
Humanists contributed, in no small degree, to human prog- 



COMENIUS. 69 

ress, however the application of their ideas may have 
retarded immediate growth. In their perfect organization 
and in their gentle methods, the Jesuits set an example of 
the highest value, notwithstanding the fatal defects of their 
system. As for Bacon, his spirit was, as I have tried to 
show, on» of the main sources of modern education; but, 
without dilution and adaptation to the needs of society, his 
teachings would have been almost barren of pedagogic results. 
As time went on, however, the direct influence of the lead- 
ers of these movements, of Luther, of Sturm, of Loyola, of 
Bacon, waned, and the inevitable perversion of their systems 
supervened. Luther's plans, committed to his wrangling 
successors, partook of their controversies, and the village 
schools became battle-grounds of dogma. The system of 
Sturm that, in his hands, tended to unlock the moral as 
well as the rhetorical treasures of the ancients, fell, after 
his death, into the dry routine of textual criticism, — a 
routine that was, and still is, a curse to the English 
schools.^ The method of the Jesuits, externally so fair, 
developed into a soulless machine, crushing youth into a 
mould of intolerance, unmanliness, and deceit. Bacon's 
philosophy alone seems to have contained the elements of 
growth, and in treating of Comenius I hope to show how 
these elements were fostered and developed. Later we 
shall study the revolt against the Jesuits; we shall gain 

1 As recently as 1878, Professor Alexander Bain wrote, in his Edu- 
cation as a Science (N.Y, 1892, 380) : " The classical system has been 
the practical exclusion of all other studies from the secondary or 
grammar schools" (in England). . . . "The pressure of opinion 
has compelled the introduction of new branches — as English, Modern 
Languages, and Physical Sciences ; but either these are little more 
than a formality, or the pupils are subjected to a crushing burden of 
conflicting studies. ... In the evening preparation it is found that 
the classical lessons absorb the greater part of the attention." 



70 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. ' 

also, I trust, some idea of the decline of classicism. Let 
me here try to show how from a union of Bacon's philosophy 
and Luther's democracy there resulted the public school. 
The problem that Luther was too busy, Bacon too lofty, to 
undertake, was solved by the son of a Moravian miller, a 
wanderer on the face of the earth. The most influential 
teacher of the seventeenth century, one of the greatest 
figures in the history of education, is this Moravian, whose 
Latin name is Johannes Amos Comenius. 

Throughout his stormy career two influences dominate 
him; that of Bacon's philosophy, and that of the spirit of 
the Keformation. To the first is due his comprehensive 
scheme; to the second,- his labors in behalf of common 
schools. To Bacon and to Luther he owes his main ideas, 
but to two other men he acknowledges himself, in lesser 
degree a debtor. These are Vives and Eatich. The first, 
a Spaniard, tutor to the Princess Mary until, because of his 
opposition to the King's divorce, he was driven from court, ^ 
waged vigorous war against the Aristotelian supremacy.^ 

1 Professor Brewer {The Beign of Henry VIII. Beviewed and Illus- 
trated from Original Documents. London, 1884, 2 vols.) puts Vives in 
a rather different light. After stating, on contemporary authority, 
that Vives was one of the few Spaniards whom, during the negotia- 
tions relative to divorce, Katharine was permitted to retain, he says 
(II. 318) : "It appears that he was compelled by the King, who was 
now grown wholly unscrupulous, to reveal the subjects of his con- 
versations with the Queen ; and he justly complains of this outrage to 
which he, who was one of her council and a subject of the Emperor" 
(of Spain) "had thus been exposed ; 'not,' he says, ' that it could 
injure any one to relate it, even if it were published at the church 
doors.' He had intended to return to Spain in May, but, at the King's 
request, remained until Michaelmas, and during the winter, at Katha- 
rine's desire, gave the Princess Mary lessons in Latin." 

2 " Vives must be regarded as the most important philosophical re- 
former of this period" (the early Renaissance), " and as a forerunner 



COMENIUS. 71 

The second, a pedagogic adventurer of no mean influence, 
went about from court to court, offering to disclose, for a 
substantial reward, a new and short method of learning lan- 
guages. The pedantic court of Weimar took him up, and 
he made much stir in the European world ; but his influence 
was not permanent. He enunciated, however, certain prin- 
ciples of value, the chief of which are these : — 

"Everything according to the order and course of nature." 

"Everything in the mother-tongue first." 

"Everything without violence." 

"Matter before form." 

" Everything through experience and the investigation of 
particulars." ^ 

From the teachings of many besides these four, Comenius 
sought, with greater or less result, the aid that it was his 
nature to crave. Like Bacon, he lit his torch at every man's 
candle,^ but, unlike Bacon, he had no wish to extinguish 
the spark that had enkindled him. Never was there a 
great man more modest than he. Duty, the flame of zeal, 
not love of authority, impelled him to publicity. Could he 
have found in his reading — and he searched with extraor- 
dinary pains — a method which even partially fulfilled 
his ideal, he would have accepted it without hesitation and 
would have effaced himself in the preaching of it. He 
studies all authors available to him ; he writes, to all 

of Descartes and of Bacon. His whole life was an uninterrupted 
struggle against Scholasticism. . . . Vives was one of the clearest 
heads of his century." — Lange, Hist, of Materialism (Thomas's 
trans.), I. 228. 

1 Cf. Browning, Educ. Theories, Ch. IV. ; Quick, Educ. Beformers, 
Ch. IX. 

2 A phrase used by Rawley (Spedding, Works, I.). " And for him- 
self, he contemned no man's observations, but would light his torch at 
every man's candle." 



72 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

parts of Europe, letters of inquiry, begging for sugges- 
tions. Only as a last resort does he himself formulate 
a system, and in it he has no wilful pride or overcon- 
fidence. The vacillation and fluctuation of his writings 
show that he was always receptive, always ready to throw 
aside his own ideas in order to accept those of another. 
Simple, single of purpose, patient, untiring, steadfast 
under continued adversity, the old Bishop is a pathetic 
figure, made heroic by life-long sorrow. The little church 
of the United Brethren finds its ^best exponent in this 
leader of hers whose birth occurred more than three hun- 
dred years ago. 

Born ^ in a village of Bohemia, he came of a Slavic family 
named Komenski, attached to the sect of the United 
Brethren. His parents dying while he was still in infancy, 
he became a charge upon the community, and was given 
such a schooling as the primitive village afforded. Slight 
as this was, the precious attributes of piety, earnestness, 
simplicity, and belief in Christian brotherhood were secured 
to him by the Moravian atmosphere. At sixteen years of 
age, though ignorant of Latin, the sole vehicle of learning, 
he gave sufficient promise to obtain for him a ministerial 
training. He was sent by the Brethren to Herborn, in 
Kassau. There and at Heidelberg he completed his edu- 
cation. Too young, on his return to Bohemia to take a 
pastorate, he was given the rectorship of a school. Here 
he worked diligently, attempting a reform of the Latin 
teaching, until, four years later, he was made pastor of the 
parish at Fulneck, the most flourishing of the Moravian 
churches. There he married, and there he spent the last 
years in which he was to see happiness. In 1621, the hor- 
rors of the Thirty Years' War having begun, Fulneck was 

1 March 28, 1592. 



COMENIUS. 73 

sacked by the Spaniards. Comenius lost everything, in- 
cluding his books and manuscripts.^ 

The next six years were years of wandering and hiding, 
until, by the final edict of dispersion, he was driven out of 
his fatherland into Poland. He established himself at 
Lissa,^ near the frontier, was rector of the Moravian school 
there, and, inspired by the difficulties of teaching, became 
filled with a holy and unflagging zeal for the improvement 
of education. In the fresh enthusiasm of this time, he 
wrote the Great Didactic,^ in which are given his ideas in 
their first purity, before they became, as in later years, 
confused and somewhat mystical. Here he began, too, the 
text-books which were to occupy so much of his life. 

At the death of his father-in-law, bishop of the perse- 
cuted brethren, Comenius was chosen to succeed him, and, 
for the remainder of his life, in addition to his labors for 
education, he busily writes to the scattered brothers, cheers 
them with hope of relief from exile and persecution, and 
fills them with visions of a union of Christian sects. ^ The 
good man seems, indeed, to have been an indefatigable letter- 
writer. He sought intellectual help from all quarters, 
entering into correspondence, among others, with Hartlib ^ 
— Milton's Hartlib — the friend and promoter of works of 
education. This philanthropist became immensely inter- 
ested in Comenius's larger projects. The union of Chris- 



1 Some authorities say that his wife and child also perished, but it is 
more probable that they died in the following year, perhaps as a result 
of hardships. 

2 Called also, Lesna and Leszno. 

^ Didactica 3Iagna ; universale omnes omnia docendi artificium 
exhibens : etc., etc. See Laurie, Comenius, p. 70. 

4 See Note 1, p. 92. 

^ For an account of this interesting man, see Masson, Milton^ 
III. 193. 



74 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

tendom and, as a means to it, the marshalling of all learn- 
ing into a universal philosophy, were dreams that met with 
an immediate response in his enthusiastic mind. He could 
not be satisfied until he had persuaded Comenius to visit 
England. Accordingly, in 1641, the Moravian appeared, 
prepared to lay his plan of a pansophia, or school of all 
knowledge, before the Long Parliament. But that body was 
more concerned with the immediate problems of democracy 
than with costly experiments upon Bacon's theories.^ 

Mortified and bitterly disappointed, Comenius was pre- 
paring to return to Poland, when he received, through his 
friend, Louis de Geer, an urgent call to Sweden. His par- 
tisans in London begged him to remain until a lull in politi- 
cal affairs should permit of the pushing forward of his 
pansophia, already, so far as it was heeded at all, most 
favorably looked upon. England was stormy and uncer- 
tain, however, while the northern kingdom, guided by its 
great Chancellor, seemed on the road to power and peace. 
Hopes were held out to him, too, that a removal to S^veden 
might not delay his plans, but that the Scandinavians, 
equally with the English, might be hospitable to his pan- 
sophic scheme. But these hopes were dashed even at his 
first interview with Oxenstierna. That keen and busy 
statesman was far too impatient of delay to be satisfied 
with so shadowy a proposal. 

In a famous discussion of two days,^ this "Eagle of the 
North," ^ as Comenius calls him, shows himself as practical 
as he is broad. He attacks the Schoolmen, derides Eatich, 

1 Strafford had just been executed, and, while Comenius awaited 
the pleasure of Parliament, the "Remonstrance" was published and 
the "Privilege of the House " was invaded by the King. 

2 Reported by Comenius in the preface to the second volume of his 
collected works. See Laurie, Comenius, 41. 

2 Aquilonaris aquila. 



COMENIUS. 75 

to whom he had already appealed in vain for practical sug- 
gestions, shows the folly of the pansopliia, and makes it 
plain to Comenius that Sweden wants school-books, not 
pedagogic dreams. The friends in England learning of 
this, clamor for his return, accusing him of apostasy from 
the great purpose of his life. But the readiness of the 
Swedish government to give immediate help, the offer of 
De Geer to maintain him for a number of years, contrasted 
with the turbulence of England, win the contest. He re- 
tires to Elbing, in Prussia, there to devote six years, in 
the unquiet security of dependence upon the somewhat 
arbitrary De Geer, to preparing text-books for the little 
Swedes. Bitterly, in his old age, does he repent this sacri- 
fice of his strength. "How badly have I imitated," he 
cries, ^ "that merchant seeking for good pearls, who, when 
he had found a pearl of great price, went away and sold all 
he had and bought it! 0, wretched sons of light, who 
know not how to imitate the wisdom of the children of the 
world! Would that I, having once struck the pansophic 
vein, had followed it up, neglecting all else! But so it 
happens when we lend an ear to the solicitations clam- 
oring outside us, rather than to the light shining within 
us." 

His obligations to Sweden fulfilled, Comenius returns to 
Lissa, but soon, listening to other "outside solicitations,"^ 
goes to Patak, in the Tokay district of Hungary, under the 
patronage of the Transylvanian princes. Although, in so 
doing, he surrenders his pansophia, this period is one of 
comparative happiness to him. His patrons are liberal, 
they give him latitude in the application of his theories, 



1 Laurie, Comenius, 54. 

^ Bayle would have us believe that Comenius's life was always led 
in the direction of the largest creature comforts. 



76 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

he sees a beginning that may develop into pansophia.^ But 
his episcopal duties recall him to Lissa, war follows him, 
the Swedes capture the city, he unwisely writes, it is said, 
a panegyric on Gustavus, the Poles rise, recapture the city, 
and he narrowly escapes. Everything he owns is destroyed, 
including precious manuscripts, on which he had labored 
for forty years. Again he is a fugitive, wandering hither 
and yon, at last finding asylum in Amsterdam with Lau- 
rence de Geer, the son of his old patron, dead not many 
years. ^ Here in this Dutch city, an exile even from the 
Poland that had sheltered him, his spiritual flock scattered 
to every corner of Europe, his pansophia wholly unrealized, 
he passes peacefully, except for the assaults of the School- 
men, the remainder of his melancholy life. During these 
last years he revises his many writings, by the liberality 
of De Geer and other Dutch merchants, publishes them in 
four huge volumes, cheers, as best he can by correspondence, 
the hunted Moravians, and, becoming more and more a 
mystic, letting his fancy stray into ever wilder pastures, 
dies in his eightieth year. 

Wide as were the wanderings of this pious old man, they 
narrowly missed extension even to America. For we read in 
Mather's Magnalia : ^ — 

"That brave old man, Johannes Amos Commenius, the 
fame of whose worth has been trumpetted as far as more 

1 For an account of his school at Patak, see Theodor Lion, Come- 
nius, p. 97 et seq. 

2 " II se sauva en Silesie, et puis au pais de Brandebourg, ensuite a 
Hambourg, et enfin a Amsterdam, oli il trouva des personnes extr^me- 
ment charitables. La pluie d'or, qui tomba sur lui dans cette ville, 
I'obligea de s'y arreter pour le reste de ses jours." — Bayle, Diet. hist, 
et crit., I. 912. 

3 Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (Hartford, 1820, 
2 vols.), ILIO. 



COMENIUS. 77 

than three languages (whereof everyone is enclebted unto 
his Janua), could carry it was indeed agreed witliall, by 
our Mr. Winthrop in his travels through the low Countries, 
to come over into JSlew England, and illuminate their Col- 
ledge and country, in the quality of a President: But the 
solicitations of the /Sivedish Ambassador, diverting him an- 
other way, that incomparable 3Ioravian became not an 
A7nerican." 

What a fertile source of speculation is this paragraph! 
If Comenius had yielded to "our Mr. Winthrop," and if 
thereby Dunster had been succeeded by this vigorous re- 
former instead of by the testy yet pliable Chauncy,^ what 
might not have been the difference of result. How unlike 
its real history might have been the growth, not alone of 
Harvard College, but of the whole country! Throwing off 
the shackles of English tradition two hundred years earlier 
than it in fact did, what might not this university have 
accomplished ! The chief leader of New Eugland thought, 
its early emancipation from the humanities would have 
altered the whole course of American history. The great 
Oxenstierna ought, perhaps, to be added to the list, already 
too long, of conservative forces governing New England. 

During his long and troubled life, Comenius produced a 
vast pile of writings, many of them vain repetitions, and not 
a few of them, I imagine, dreary as any of the stuff brought 
forth by the scholastics. His chief works are the Great 
Didactic, produced in his early days at Lissa ; the Janua 
Linguce Latince reserata, or " Gate of the Latin Language 
unlocked," written at the same period, and to which his 
world-wide fame was due; the additions to the Janua, 
namely, the Vestibulum, or "Threshold," the Atrium, or 

1 See Qiiincy, History of Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass., 
1840), I. 24 ; also Magnalia, I. 418. 



78 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

"Entrance Hall," the Palatium, or "Treasure-house"; and 
finally, most famous of all, the Orhis sensualiimi Fictus, or 
"World of Visible things Portrayed." ^ 

Comenius was always hampered by the voluminousness 
of his ideas, and, paradoxical as it may seem, by the 
catholicity of his reading. Filled with zeal, he had the 
zealot's fault of hobby-riding. Diffident of his own powers, 
he grasped at any notion of other men that seemed to point 
in his direction. A strain of mysticism in his character, a 
vein of fancifulness in his intellect, often led him astray. 
Several times he was the abject dupe of charlatans, a fact 
of which the malicious Bayle takes minute account. In 
one of his lesser works, he throws away all his funda- 
mental principles, merely that he may logically follow a 
fanciful conceit. He is always, indeed, in a state of vacil- 
lation. The main points of his system which he evolves 
in the Great Didactic are repudiated in the later editions of 
the Janua. In the Vestibulum and the Orbis Pictus, he 
returns to these princij^les, only to leave in the Atrium and 
Palatium his position undefined. It would be a waste of 
time to follow him in these vexatious turnings and doub- 
lings. What he saw clearly and taught well has endured. 
What was confused and contradictory has been sent to 
deserved oblivion.^ 



1 First pubhshed at Nuremberg, in 1657. 

2 I ought, in fairness, to confess that I have shirked the duty of 
following him in the original Latin, possessing neither the ability nor 
the patience to traverse the twenty-three hundred pages of his ponder- 
ous treatises. I have placed dependence upon modern interpreters of 
him, especially upon Professor Laurie, of Edinburgh, who did under- 
take the weary task, who gives a careful analysis, with full extracts, 
of the writings, and who declares his aim to have been the omission of 
nothing "characteristic, useful, or historically important." But, even 
with work so materially lessened, it is not easy to avoid confusion of 



COMENIUS. 79 

It is best, perhaps, to consider here the chief points of 
the Great Didactic, since in this, his earliest work, he is 
most consistent. In it, moreover, liis really original 
notions are, in the main, developed. Having done this, 
we shall be ready to examine his enlargements of this 
treatise, to study the sources from which he drew inspira- 
tion, and, finally, to discover in his amplification of these 
radical ideas, the value of his contributions to the growth 
of rational education. 

He starts out with the propositions, the first two founded 
on Bacon, that — 

"Man should know all things." 

"He should have power over all things and over himself." 

"He should refer himself and all things to God, the 
source of all." ^ 

Knowledge, virtue, piety, — on these he builds his struct- 
ure of education. "The seeds of these three," he says,'-^ 
" are in us by nature ; that is, our first, original, and funda- 
mental nature, to which we are to be recalled by God in 
Christ." "Nature gives the seeds of knowledge, morality, 
and religion," he says in another place, ^ "but it does not 
give knowledge, virtue, and religion themselves. These 
have to be striven for.^ . . . Man then has to be edu- 

mind and, therefore, of statement, in dealing witli Comeniiis's prin- 
ciples. • 

For the text of the Didactica Magna^ I have followed, mainly, the 
German translation of Dr. Lion, availing myself, moreover, of his 
marginal indication of the section numbering used by Comenius. 

1 Didactica 3Iagna, 24. See Laurie, Comenius, 72 ; and Lion, 
K. 4, § 6. 

2 Laurie, Comenius, 72. 3 75 ^VL, 74. 

4 "Diese werden durch Reden, Lernen, Handeln erworben. Daher 
hat nicht uber jeniand den Menschen definirt, er sei ein Schulbares 
Geschbpf; er kann nur Mensch werden, wenn er unterrichtet wird." 
— Beeger u. Zoubek, Crosse Unterrichtslehrer, 43. 



80 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

cated to become a man ; ... in order that the human 
being may be educated to full humanity, God has given him 
certain years of childhood during which he is not fit for 
active life ; and that only is firm and stable which has been 
imbibed during the earliest years." 

Then follows a remark of profound significance in these 
days. "The care of children belongs properly to their par- 
ents, but they need the help " — help, not usurpation — " of 
those specially set apart for education, . . . and there is, 
consequently, a need for schools and colleges." "Schools 
should be instituted in every part of the empire, and the 
whole of the youth of both sexes should be sent to these. 
Schools have been truly called . . . workshops or manufac- 
tories of humanity where man may be trained to be — 1. A 
rational creature; 2. A creature lord of other creatures and 
of himself; 3. A creature which shall be the joy of his 
Creator. That only I call a school which is truly officina 
hominum, where minds are instructed in wisdom to pene- 
trate all things, where souls and their affections are guided 
to the universal harmony of the virtues, and hearts are 
allured to divine love." 

In these few pregnant sentences, Comenius announces 
four doctrines new in his day, — parental responsibility for 
education, universal education, coeducation, and a com- 
plete, rounded education.^ As an early preacher, if not the 

1 " All children, rich and poor, well-born and lowly, boys and girls, 
should be taught in schools ; in all should God's image be implanted ; 
each should be fitted for his future career. Each should learn every- 
thing ; every man is a microcosm. Not that each can attain to all 
knowledge, but all who, in this world, would be doers and not mere 
lookers-on, must be so taught that they may learn to analyze the prin- 
ciples, conditions, and purposes of all vital things, present or to come." 
— Didact., 45. Quoted by Von Raumer, Gesch. d. Pad., II. 58. See 
L'ion, 217. 



COMENIUS. 81 

first important preacher of tliese principles, Comenius may 
truly be regarded as the father of the public school. First, 
the school system of Germany, secondly, our American 
system — absurd as it seems to give a nationality to methods 

— followed and follow on these lines. Having enunciated 
these principles, wild and revolutionary to most of his 
contemporaries, he proceeds to the details of organiza- 
tion. 

"A certain fixed time," he says,^ ''ought to be set apart 
for the complete education of youth, at the end of which 
they may go forth from school to the business of life truly 
instructed, truly moral, truly religious." 

" The time that is required for this is the whole period 
of youth; that is to say, from birth to manhood, which is 
fully attained in twenty-four years. Dividing the twenty- 
four years into periods of six years each, we ought to have 
a school suited to each period, viz. : the school of — 

1. Infancy: the mother's lap up to six years of age. 

2. Boyhood: the vernacular public school. 

3. Adolescence : the Latin school or gymnasium. 

4. Youth: the university and travel." 

" The Infant School " — again note the lesson for to-day 

— " should be found in every house, the Vernacular School 
in every village and community, the Gymnasium" (the 
word being used in the German, not in our restricted sense) 
" in every province, and the University in every kingdom 
or large province." 

In his scheme of the mother-school he adopts the idea of 
Bacon, that a little of everything should from the first be 
taught. He develops this tentative notion, however, into 
absolute encyclopedism. As this outline of the mother- 

1 Didact., 164, 165, 166 (Lion, K. XXVIL, p. 446). Quoted by 
Laurie, p. 131. 



82 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

school is an epitome of his main pansophic idea, I will give 
it, quoting Professor Laurie somewhat at length.^ 

"In the infant school (which is the family)," Comenius 
says, "the elements have to be taught of everything neces- 
sary to the building up of the life of man, and we shall 
show that this is possible by running over the different de- 
partments of knowledge." He demonstrates then that the 
child acquires rudimentally a knowledge of — 

"1. Metaphysics, by ordinary observation of is, is-not, 
where, ivhen, etc. 

"2. Physics,^ by knowing the elements (water, earth, air, 
fire, rain, etc.) and the parts of his own body. 

"3. Optics, when he learns light, darkness, etc. 

" 4. Astronomy, when he learns to name sun, moon, etc. 

" 5. The beginnings of Geography, when the child under- 
stands what a mountain is, a plain, a valley, a river, a 
village, a city, a state. 

"6. Chronology, in learning what an hour is, a day, a 
week, a month, a year, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, 
etc. 

"7. History, in learning what has recently happened,^ 
and the way in which it happened, and how this or that 
man conducted himself. 

" 8. Arithinetic, by finding out the much and the little, 
by counting up to 10, and by the simplest forms of addition 
and subtraction. 

"9. The rudiments of Geometry, in discovering great 

1 Comenius^ 133 et seq. 

2 Used in the broad sense {Naturwissenschaften) . See Beeger u. 
Zoubek (note), 264. 

^ "Every week Comenius appointed an hour for the reading aloud 
of newspapers {prcdegantur ordinarim mercatorum novellce), in order 
to learn contemporary history and geography." — Von Raumek, Gesch. 
d. Pad., II. 85. 



COMENIUS. 8B 

and small, long and short, broad and narrow, thick and 
thin, a line, a circle, etc. 

"10. Statics, in observing the light and heavy, and by 
balancing things. 

" 11. Mechanics, by causing the children to carry things 
from one place to another, to arrange things, to build and 
take to pieces, to tie, and untie. 

"12. The beginnings even of Dialectic are taught by 
question and answer, and by requiring direct and adequate 
answers to interrogations. 

" 13. Grammar is acquired by the child in its elements 
through the right articulating of his mother-tongue, letters, 
syllables, words. 

" 14. Rhetoi'ic, by hearing the use of metaphors in ordi- 
nary conversation, and of the rising and falling inflection in 
speech. 

"15. The foundation of a taste for Poetry, by learning 
little verses. 

"16. The daily exercises of household piety, including 
the singing of easy psalms and hymns, will give the ele- 
ments of Music. 

"17. The rudiments of Economics,''- hj noting the rela- 
tions of father, mother, domestic servant, and the parts of 
a house and its furnishings. 

"18. Of Polity less can be learned, but even in this 
sphere some knowledge of the civil government and the 
names of governors and magistrates may be acquired. 

" 19. But above all, the foundations of Morality have to 
be firmly laid — by training to» temperance in all things, 
cleanliness of habits, due reverence to superiors, prompt 
obedience, truthfulness, justice, charity, continual occupa- 
tion, patience, serviceableness to others, civility. 

1 Hauswirtschaftslehre (Liou, and Beeger u. Zoubek). 



84 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

" 20. In Religion and Piety the beginnings are to be laid. 
The elements of the Christian religion should be committed 
to memory, and the child should be trained to recognize the 
perpetual presence of Grod, his dependence on Him, and to 
see in Him a punisher of evil and a rewarder of good. 
Simple prayers should be taught, and the child led to bend 
the knee and fold the hands in prayer.^ 

In the vernacular school, covering the years from six to 
twelve, the same encyclopedic plan is followed; but, won- 
derful in those days, instruction is to be given wholly in 
the mother-tongue.^ He plans that this shall be pre- 
eminently a useful school, that all children shall be taught, 
in these years, all things which may be of direct value in 
the actual business of life. He realized, as too few of 
those concerned since in education have done, that this 
matter of the practical is a great question, which must be 
faced in the planning of all public schools. His course 
prescribes reading, writing, arithmetic, mensuration, geog- 
raphy, general history, " so much of economy and polity as 
is necessary for the understanding of what goes on around 
him," singing, ethics, and religion. He adds,^ "A gen- 
eral knowledge of the mechanical arts should be given, that 
boys may better understand the affairs of ordinary life, and 
that opportunities be thus given to boys to find out their 
special aptitudes." ^ Here is the origin of manual training, 
as, in Rabelais, appeared the first suggestion of technology^ 
From the insufficiency of his scheme for this period, it 
seems plain that the problem of this formative epoch in 
education was no less difficult than it is now. 

In the third, or gymnastic period, he is more at home. 

1 Didact., 168-171. See Lion, K. XXVIII. 452. 

2 See his reasons (L'ion, K. XXIX. 461 et seq.). 

3 Didact., 174 ; Laurie, 139. 

4 Cf. Didact., 182 ; Lion, 482. 



COMENIUS. 85 

Not only is the problem easier, but in the fortunate years 
at Patak, lie had opportunity to experiment with a school 
of this general character. He yields so far to custom as 
to base his gymnastic course upon the time-honored Trivium 
(grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric), and Quadrivium (arith- 
metic, geometry, music, and astronomy), these being the 
seven liberal arts of the Humanists. But to these arts 
he adds physics, — experimental and applied, — geography, 
chronology, history, ethics, and theology. These subjects 
he purposes teaching so well and so thoroughly that "there 
is nothing in Heaven or Earth, or in the Waters, nothing 
in the Abyss under the earth, nothing in the Human Body, 
nothing in the Soul, nothing in Holy Writ, nothing in the 
Arts, nothing in Economy, nothing in Polity, nothing in 
the Church, of which the little candidates of Wisdom shall 
be wholly ignorant."^ 

The claim is preposterous, but the aim is good, and the 
means to attain pansophic knowledge is summed up by 
Comenius with truth and brevity.^ "To secure a good 
education to a child, three things are necessary, — good 
teachers, good books, good methods." To enable one teacher 
to superintend the work of many pupils, he proposes a moni- 
torial system, suggestive of that which Bell and Lancaster 
put to such pernicious use in England more than a century 
after. Good teachers must themselves be raised up, text- 
books on his pansophic plan must be written, and, these 
obtained, there will remain only the need of a good method. 

Comenius advises a mild, but firm, discipline, and distin- 
guishes between the two kinds of offences, reserving chas- 
tisement for those against morals. In his Dissertatio 
de sermonis Latini studio, he gives most valuable hints to 
teachers for the carrying out of his pedagogic principles. 

1 Quoted by Laurie, 191. 2 Laurie, 192. 



86 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

These hints are of that class of truism which is seldom kept 
firmly in mind, and reference to which gives one always a 
pleasant sensation of novelty. Here are a few of them : ^ — 

" Let the teacher not teach as much as he is able to teach, 
but only as much as the learner is able to learn." 

" Let nothing ever seem so easy as to relieve the teacher 
of the duty of striving, in various ways, to make it more 
perspicuous." 

"Never let the pupils be overburdened with a mass of 
things to be learned." 

" Three things always are to be formed in the pupil, viz. : 
mind, hand, and tongue." 

"Never dismiss any topic which has been begun until it 
is thoroughly finished." 

" Whatever is taught let it be taught accurately. " 

The university, he proposes, shall be not only a place for 
the teaching of all arts and sciences, for the acquiring of 
all knowledge, but also the home and centre of research, 
discovery, and invention. Here we find forestalled that 
very modern tendency, the broadening of the field of col- 
lege work. To this final division of the schools, only the 
flower of youth is to be admitted. All ordinary boys must 
be sent from the public schools at the end of the gymnas- 
tic period or, perhaps, at the close of the vernacular school; 
they must take their places as farmers, mechanics, and 
shopkeepers.^ 

Comparing the richness of his programme with the poverty 

1 Laurie, 127. See, also, quotations from Methodus Novissima given 
in Amer. Journ. Ed.^ V, 290 et seq. 

2 " Die Arbeit der Academie selbst wird leichter und erfolgreicher 
von Statten gehen, w^enn erstens nur die auserwahlteren Geister, die 
Bliithe der Menschen, dorthin geschickt werden ; die iibrigen aber 
zum Pfluge, zum Handwerk, oder Handel — je nachdem sie dazu 
geboren sind — sich hinwenden." — Lion, 482 {Didact., 181). 



COMENIUS. 87 

of the school courses of his day, Comenius saw that he must 
devise some means whereby the immensity of the task 
which he sets may be covered in the same space of time as 
that given, heretofore, to a beggarly smattering of the 
humanities. He solves the problem by an appeal to 
^'Method." " Order is the soul of the world; order sustains 
nature in all its parts; order, too, is the eye of the school; 
from nature must be taken this order of the school." ^ This 
question of method he returns to again and again. Profes- 
sor Laurie,^ reviewing his principles, says: — 

"The school-time must be so ordered that every year, 
month, week, day, hour, may have its own task. The 
tasks should be so arranged that they are within the powers 
of the average mind : in this way the more ordinary natures 
will be stimulated, while the more precocious and brilliant 
will be retarded to their advantage. Pupils should be 
admitted only at the beginning of the school year. On no 
day should boys do more than six hours' work, and those 
all in public and in school. The rest should be given to 
relaxation and domestic duties. The school is the proper 
place for school work; moreover, home-work is apt to be 
badly done, and badly done work is more hurtful than no 
work at all. The hours should not be consecutive; the 
morning should be devoted to studies that call into requisi- 
tion the intellect, the judgment, and the memory; the 
afternoon to the discipline of hand, voice, style, demeanor." 

"The occupations of the pansophic school are not all of 
equal importance. They may be classed as primary, secon- 
dary, and tertiary. The primary are those which contain 
the essence or substance of Wisdom, Virtue, Piety, and 
Eloquence, such as Languages, Philosophy, and Theology ; 
the secondary are auxiliary to these, such as History; the 

1 Laurie, 77. Cf. Didact., 61-63 (Lion, 245 et seq.). 2 p. 193. 



88 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

tertiary only indirectly contribute to the primary occupa- 
tions, e.g. all that pertain to vigor of health and mental 
alacrity, such as recreation and sports. But all the occu- 
pations and studies have a place at each successive stage of 
progress, and are to be presented according to the same 
method. ^^ 

" At the same time, the order of the instruction is sub- 
ject to certain general laws : for in the younger classes we 
have to appeal chiefly to the senses, and to cultivate obser- 
vation; and, as the pupils advance, we draw more on the 
activity of the memory, the intellect proper, and the power 
of expressing what is known." 

This principle of method is his primal doctrine. For his 
strenuous advocacy of it the world owes its chief debt to 
Comenius. The Jesuits, also, taught order; upon method 
the system of Loyola and Aquaviva rests. But theirs is 
not, like Comenius's, the order of nature; it is the arbi- 
trary and rigid rule of the cloister. Comenius may have 
borrowed inspiration from them, but he gave life to a prin- 
ciple which, in their hands, was wholly fruitless, if not, 
indeed, pernicious. 

In addition to this fundamental aid of "Method," by 
which alone many years heretofore wasted will be saved to 
the child, Comenius finds other ways of instruction so " that 
arts may be shortened with a view to rapid learning." 
These are, in the main, the underlying principles of all 
good systems of teaching; namely, a dependence upon in- 
duction, a strict adhesion to step-by-step methods, the 
making of learning pleasant so that desire for study shall 
be aroused, the careful gauging of instruction to the capac- 
ity of the pupil, a constant appeal, where possible, to the 
senses, and, finally, encyclopedism, that is, the presenta- 
tion to the pupil of all varieties of knowledge at all periods 
of his advancement, suiting the complexity of the view to 



COMENIUS. 89 

the age and capacity of the child. This final principle is 
accepted to-day, in general, only so far as to secnre at every 
stage of the pupil's development, an equal and steady ad- 
vance of all his faculties.^ 

Upon these principles Comenius intended to build up his 
text-books, but the deficiencies to which reference has been 
made, — that is, his inability to properly digest his ideas and 
materials, and a certain whimsical temperament, — combined 
with the magnitude of the task of overthrowing suddenly 
the deep-laid systems of his day, warped his well-conceived 
plans in their execution. Thus the Janua, which brought 
him high and immediate fame, departs widely, in its later 
editions, — those which have the seal of his aj)proval, — 
from his principles ; it departs so widely, indeed, as to 
advise the absurd method of teaching Latin by presenting 
the lexicon and the grammar to the pupil before allowing 
him to read and speak the tongue. 

In the first form of the Janua, however, and in the 
Vestibulum, which is an introduction or "Threshold" to 
it, his plan is rational and in accord with his truer under- 
standing. His method there is to begin with the origin of 
the universe, to take up then the "elements," — as in those 
days fire, air, water, and earth, were named, — to follow 
with a study of plants, of animals, and of man, to develop 
next the arts and sciences, and to conclude with the attri- 
butes and providence of God. 

Although modified in the many editions which appeared, 
his underlying idea is so to present this encyclopedic 
knowledge that it shall be both easy and interesting to the 
child, and in such a form that one or many languages may 
be, at the same time, learned. To this end, he arranges 

1 Cf. Herbart, Science of Education, Bk. II. (Felkin's Trans., 
Boston, 1893), 122. 



90 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

words and sentences in parallel columns, those in Latin or 
in the other languages to be learned being given in literal 
translation from the vernacular. Those in the mother- 
tongue are studied first; the things and actions which they 
represent are made perfectly plain and familiar to the pupil 
before the foreign equivalents are taken up. These are 
then made as clear and common to the child as those in the 
native speech. By this process, he believed, not only 
would a perfect and complete knowledge of all things, 
spiritual and temporal, be gained, but in its acquisition the 
grammar and vocabulary of any language could be attained 
without sensible effort. 

In the Orbis Pictus, which for a hundred years or more 
was the primer of the German peoples, he carried this 
idea still further, remedying a defect which had greatly 
diminished the value of the Janua and Vestibulum. He 
associated with every topic studied a woodcut, suitably 
numbered and annotated, so that when the actual object, 
whose use whenever possible he makes imperative, could 
not be obtained, its image should be before the pupil's 
eyes. With infinite trouble he found an engraver compe- 
tent to prepare these woodcuts, and edition after edition 
of this novel picture-book appeared in Europe, to make less 
hard the thorny path of learning. To Comenius, therefore, 
we owe not only the vital principle of object-teaching, but 
also the first school picture-book, the forerunner of the 
legions of to-day. 

This book, of which Hoole's English-Latin version has 
recently been reprinted,^ is delightfully naive. It is pref- 
aced by an alphabet founded upon the cries of animals, — a 
novel, though scarcely accurate, method. That the "Bear 

1 By C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N.Y. The plates and Latin text 
are taken from the first edition of 1657, but the English text is from 
the Enghsh edition of 1727. 



COMENIUS. 91 

grumbletli mm " and the "Dog grinnetli rr" might, how- 
ever, vivify the twenty-six crooked symbols to the unhappy 
abecedarian. To illustrate the system of the Orhis Pictus, 
let me quote from two of the lessons. The first is on 
"Flying Vermin," as Hoole quaintly translates Insecta Vo- 
lantia. The "vermin" are pictured in a hilly landscape, 
and are duly numbered for reference. 

" The Bee, 1. maketh honey which the Drone, 2. devour- 
eth. The Wasp, 3. and the Hornet, 4. molest with a sting ; 
and the Gad-bee (or Breese), 5. especially Cattel; but the 
Fly, 6. and the Gnat, 7. us. The Cricket, 8. singeth. The 
Butterfly, 9. is a winged Caterpillar. The Beetle, 10. cov- 
ereth her wings with Cases. The Glow-worm, 11. shineth 
by night." ^ The second lesson which I quote is, fortu- 
nately, a somewhat advanced one. It is upon the "Tor- 
menting of Malefactors " (Supplicia Malefactorum) . So 
many are the tortures that the illustrations, happily, are 
small and indistinct. 

" Malefactors are brought from the Prison (where they are 
wont to be tortured) by Serjeants, or dragged with a Horse, 
to place of Execution. Thieves are hanged by the Hang- 
man on a Galloivs, Murtherers and Robbers are either laid 
upon a Wheel, having their Legs broken, or fastened upon a 
Stake. Witches are burnt in a great Fire. Some before 
they are executed have their Tongues cut out, or have their 
Ha.nd cut off upon a Block or are burnt with Pincers. They 
that have their life given them are set on the Pillory, or 
strapado^d, are set upon a ivooden Horse, have their Ea7's 
cut off, are whipped ivith Bods, are branded, are banished, 
are condemned to the Gallies, or to perpetual Imprisonment. 
Traytors are pull'd in pieces with four Horses.^' ^ 

Comenius carried the idea of object-teaching still far- 

1 Bardeen, 31. 2 Bardeen, 159. 



92 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

ther. In the Schola Ludus, borrowing the idea of dramatic 
representation, perhaps, from the Jesuits, he elaborated a 
series of schoolroom plays, in which the pupils, represent- 
ing objects and qualities, harangued one another upon the 
topic in hand until it and they were exhausted. That thes;^ 
insufferably dreary dialogues were, in his time, immensely 
popular, is a vivid comment upon the barrenness of school 
life two hundred and fifty years ago.^ 

A sufficient analysis of Comenius's methods has now, I 
think, been given to prove that Bacon's scheme of univer- 
sal knowledge is at the foundation of the Moravian's plans 
for educational reform. Starting with the Great Instaura- 
tion, he develops it into encyclopedism. Borrowing the 
philosophy of Bacon, he enlarges it and makes it available. 
His use of the inductive method, his appreciation of the 
patience and careful searching that are necessary to a real 
education, his attacking of all problems by the way of 
the senses, his striking, though often absurd use of anal- 

1 It may be a matter for surprise that Comenius, with such clear 
notions of the true end of education, with such impatience as he enter- 
tained of the time wasted in the schools of the humanists, should 
have based all his teaching, as, except in the schola vernacular, he 
did, on the study of Latin, making this the pedestal from which to 
survey the universe. He explains it himself by declaring that this 
tongue is the sole vehicle of learning and that its construction makes 
it a peculiarly valuable instrument of teaching. But, in calling Latin 
the "Universal" language, he discloses, it seems to me, the secret of 
his partiality. Never did he forget his dream of bringing all Christen- 
dom together. An exile, he had visions of a universal country with 
Christ as its spiritual head. He traced to the dispersion at Babel the 
beginning of the bloody dissensions in the midst of which he lived. 
From his thirtieth to his sixtieth year, Europe was torn by the Thirty 
Years' War, and his people were hunted, by other Christians, because 
of a difference in creed. By making the knowledge and use of Latin 
universal, he fondly believed war would cease, and world-wide peace, 
destroyed by difference of language, would reign again. 



COMENIUS. 93 

ogy, — these he owes to Bacon. But if his debt to the 
Englishman is large, Bacon's obligation to him is no less 
for making these principles, remote and indefinite as they 
originally were, useful to the world. The duty that, in 
carelessly recommending the Jesuit schools. Bacon imagined 
he fulfilled, Comenius really discharged in putting forth 
his Didactic and his text-books. "I was troubled," the 
good Bishop exclaims, "because the noble Verulam while 
giving the true key of Nature did not unlock her secrets, 
but only showed by a few examples, how they should be 
unlocked, and left the rest to future observations to be ex- 
tended through centuries."^ This leisurely unravelling, a 
work for profound scholars, Comenius brought down from 
its lofty vagueness and put into the hands of children, that 
each, every day, might do his share of the task. It is 
largely because he did this that the skein of the world has 
been in the last two centuries so swiftly untangled. 

The principle of method Comenius borrowed from the 
Jesuits, but, as we have seen, he quickened it by resting 
upon nature instead of upon art. His method, from the 
point of exactness and sureness of result, is far inferior to 
that of the Society of Jesus, but his, imperfect as it is, 
makes men, while theirs, finished as clockwork, produces 
automatons. 

His i:>lea for popular education is an echo of Luther's, 
but Luther's aim was simply to make Protestants, learned 
only in the Bible and the faith, while Comenius's end was 
such a perfect training in wisdom, virtue, and piety, that all 
men and all women should be fitted to take part in a refor- 
mation of the world, and in the founding of a Church 
Universal. 

From Katich, as we have seen, ^ he obtained many of his 

1 Laurie, 34. 2 p. 70. 



94 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

ideas; through hinij too, as well as through Yives, he 
learned to distrust Aristotle. Moreover, he shared with 
Eatich the profound influence of Bacon; but, unlike that 
strange semi-charlatan,^ he scorned to hold his labors in 
patent for the highest bidder ; rather he hurried, almost too 
eagerly, to give them to the world. As he devoutly ex- 
presses it : " What the Lord has given me, I send forth for 
the common good." 

From the humanists he gained little except a distrust 
of classicism. His Latinity had a different basis, an alien 
aim. He accepted the ancient writings as a part — though 
a small part — of knowledge; they received them as the 
whole of wisdom. He employed Latin partly as a conven- 
ience, partly in furtherance of his pan-Christian scheme, 
but he had no fondness for perfection of form. He used 
the tongue carelessly, he introduced barbarisms, and coined 
words with a freedom that disgusted the purists whose sole 
aim was the criticism of texts and readings. 

No single thought did he borrow, however, which by 
his genius he did not make of greater worth. The talents 
which he received from his masters increased in his hands 
a hundredfold. To a world that has well-nigh forgotten 
him, he left a splendid legacy, the conception and example 
of a public school; a people's school in which all boys and 
all girls shall be taught, according to their capacities and 
needs, all things ; in which order and method shall intelli- 
gently reign; in which discipline shall be mild and emula- 
tion healthy ; in which the eye and the hand, the ear and 
the touch, shall have equal training with the mind; in 
which the moral and spiritual nature shall be given full 
chance to expand. A rational school, in short, truly edu- 
cating the child in Wisdom, Virtue, and Piety. 

1 See Von Raumer's account of Raticli (properly Ratke or Rati- 
chius), translated in Am. Journ. Ed., V. 229. 



MONTAIGJSE AND LOCKE. 95 



CHAPTER V. 

MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. 

The Child has Senses to be trained, 

reaction against ecclesiasticism ; materialism ; montaigne and 
locke ; their philosophy ; sensationalists and supernalists ; 

INFLUENCE OP MATERIALISM ; MONTAIGNe's CHARACTER ; THE 
"ESSAIS"; aiONTAIGNE AND LOCKE CONTRASTED; LOCKE's LIFE; 
HIS character; his writings; the "essay concerning HUMAN 

understanding"; its principles; its fallacies; its influ- 
ence ; THE " conduct of the understanding " ; THE " thoughts " ; 

THE " DE l'iNSTITUTION DES ENFANS " ; THE TWO ESSAYS COM- 
PARED ; THEIR MAIN TEACHINGS ; FREEDCTlI AND SELF-RELIANCE. 

The Age of Faith, sunk into an age of fatuity, was 
rudely brought to a close by Luther. It was succeeded, 
gradually but irresistibly, by an era of materialism. So 
intense was the revolt against old idols that, in their de- 
struction, the truths which they represented shared, for a 
time, their fate. This inevitable reaction against blind 
belief took effect most quickly in France, whose mercurial 
people register the faintest change in mental atmosphere.^ 
The slower Anglo-Saxon temperament adapts itself less 
readily to new conditions, and not until well into the 
eighteenth century was it prepared to produce a Hume and 
a Bentham. Hence it is that Montaigne and Locke, men 

1 Notwithstanding this sensitiveness of the Celt to new ideas, it is 
generally the Anglo-Saxon, as Buckle shows {Civil, in Eiig., I. 436), 
who institutes the reforms which grow out of those ideas. 



96 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

of essentially the same trend of tliouglit, men who repre- 
sent similar tendencies, flourished more than a hundred 
years apart. The English philosopher was born in 1632, 
ninety-nine years later than his Gascon prototype.^ Since, 
from our English point of view, the influence of the gos- 
siping Frenchman was far less than that of the learned 
Locke, it seemed best to postpone acknowledgment of the 
undoubted, though indirect, influence of the former until 
it could be brought into juxtaposition with that of the 
latter. 

These two honest gentlemen represent the most genial 
and wholesome side of materialism. The first is a skeptic, 
the second an agnostic,^ in manly fashion, with no affecta- 

1 Michael Eyquem de Montaigne was born in Perigord, in 1533 ; 
John Locke in Somersetshire, in 1632. 

2 Locke was not an agnostic in the narrow sense of tlie word. His 
agnosticism embraced botli the attitudes so well defined by Prof. F. 
Max Miiller in a recent article. {Nineteenth Century, No. 214, p. 895): 
" In one sense I hope I am . . . an agnostic . . . in relying on nothing 
but historical facts and in following reason as far as it will take us in 
matters of the intellect, and in never pretending that conclusions are 
certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable ; . . . but if 
Agnosticism excludes a recognition of an eternal reason pervading the 
natural and the moral world, if to postulate a rational cause for a 
rational universe is called Gnosticism, then I am a Gnostic, and a 
humble follower of the greatest thinkers of our race from Plato and the 
author of the Fourth Gospel to Kant and Hegel." Throughout his 
life Locke remained a stanch Puritan, a believer in revelation. His 
last years were given to a demonstration of the Reasonableness of 
Christianity {q.v.). But, heartily and honestly as he accepted the 
theology of the English Church, he did so, it seems to me, purely on the 
grounds of its "reasonableness." Convinced that human nature and 
the conditions of life demand, for their explanation, the existence of a 
Supreme Mind, he accepted the idea of God as revealed in the Scrip- 
tures and as interpreted by the Protestant Church. For, as evidence 
of such a Supreme Mind cannot be obtained through the channels by 



MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. 97 

tion of despair. Their natures are so far from being 
morbid, they find man — frail and ignorant as he is — on 
the whole so good and pleasant a creature, that they see no 
reason to lament his limitations. Montaigne would have 
recoiled with disgust, Locke with horror, from the later 
cynicism of the philosophes. They can have had no vision 
of the moral dyspepsia which their intellectual banquet 
was destined to induce. The skepticism of Montaigne is 
so full of faith, albeit in man rather than in God, that it 
is free from offence. The materialism upon which Locke 
builds his high tower of argument vanishes when that 
elaborate structure confronts the Deity. 

Nevertheless, it must be kept firmly in mind that, in 
placing education upon a physical instead of upon a meta- 
physical basis, their aim was widely different from that of 
Comenius, of Rabelais, and, indeed, of Bacon. ^ In the 

which, alone, all other knowledge comes, it must be obtained through 
revelation ; and revelation, equally with phenomena, must have an 
interpreter. ' ' God, I own, cannot be denied to be able to enlighten the 
understanding by a ray darted into the mind immediately from the 
Fountain of Light," he says (Essay, Bk. IV., Ch. XIX., § 5) . Revelation 
was to him, therefore, an added bulwark of reason. " Whatsoever is 
divine revelation ought to overrule all our opinions, prejudices, and 
interests, and hath a right to be received with full assent. Such a sub- 
mission as this, of our reason to faith, takes not away the landmarks 
of knowledge ; this shakes not the foundations of reason, but leaves 
us that use of our faculties for which they were given us." (Bk. IV., 
Ch. XVIIL, § 10.) Cf. Courtney, Stud, at Leisure, 124 ; and infra, 109. 
1 "He" (Bacon) "did good service when he declared, with all the 
weight of his authority and of his eloquence, that the true end of 
knowledge is the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate. 
... To those who wish to discourage philosophy in order that igno- 
rance of second causes may lead men to refer all things to the immedi- 
ate agency of the first. Bacon puts Job's question, ' An oportet mentiri 
pro Deo,' — will you offer to the God of truth the unclean sacrifice of 
a lie ?" —Ellis, Gen. Pref to the Phil. Works (Spedding, I). 



98 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

minds of Montaigne and Locke the study of nature was the 
means to self -growth, the only method of maturing the 
senses. To the others this nature -study was the way to 
spiritual growth, the surest available avenue to the Divine. 
The Sensationalists follow Nature because she alone, they 
believe, can perfect the only thing in man perfectable, his 
senses. The Supernalists — if I may be allowed so crude 
a designation — learn of her because she holds the key, 
they maintain, to the mysteries of heaven. 

This distinction is fundamental, and cannot be too 
strongly emphasized ; for it tinctures the whole history 
of education. The attitude of Comenius foreshadowed our 
fruitful and expanding system of to-day; that of Locke 
culminated in the impossible logic of Rousseau. The epoch 
whose dawn Locke witnessed, the era of padding and crino- 
line, of wigs and jDaint, of outward show and inward abomi- 
nation, wrought its own destruction in the bloody years 
of a century ago. Upon its ruins the doctrine of Emile, 
whose author was the fatal model of the Jacobins,^ 
rose, and, by a sort of reductio ad ahsurdum, that is, by 
awakening hopes and plans which it was powerless to sat- 
isfy, gave a wonderful impulse to the "New Education." 
But the ethical foundations of that education were laid by 
Rabelais, by Luther, and by Comenius. 

Between the art and humanity of Greece and the human- 
ity and art of the Renaissance, a thousand dark years inter- 
vened, in which the forces of material freedom were accu- 

1 "Twelve Hundred human mdividuals, with the Gospel of Jean- 
Jacques Rousseau in their pocket, congregating in tlie name of Twenty- 
five Millions, with full assurance of faith, to ' make the Constitution' : 
such sight, the acme and main product of the Eighteenth Century, our 
World can witness once only. For Time is rich in wonders, in mon- 
strosities most rich ; and is observed never to repeat liimself , or any of 
his Gospels : — surely, least of all, this Gospel according to Jean- 



MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. 99 

mulating. Between the light of the Renaissance and the 
illumination of the nineteenth century, the spiritual lapse 
was shorter, but it was, none the less, a lapse. In it, how- 
ever, were born mental and moral freedom, the motor 
forces of modern progress. It was the fashion in those 
pasteboard days to hide one's real self under a mask of 
flippancy and affectation. The century followed the mode, 
and hid its real and mighty forces behind the reckless and 
brutish stage-show of Versailles. Over this age of frank 
materialism the sensationalists had, of course, great sway. 
And, on the whole, their influence was good. They 
schooled the senses, which the earlier philosophers had left 
in ignorance ; they fed them rationally, where the Church 
had either starved or surfeited. This diet, and especially 
this training, were, for three reasons, a necessary prepara- 
tion for our modern growth : first, they secured to us free- 
dom from that poverty and drudgery which perpetuate 
brutishness ; secondly, the}^ stimulated that love of beauty 
which must precede a striving after art; thirdly, they 
aroused that wholesome awe of nature which is fatal to an 
awe of kings. No schooling in democracy equals that given 
by a study of the universe. The divine rights of royalty 
vanish in the presence of the really divine and immutable 
rights of nature. The influence, then, of those followers 
of Locke who debased his sense-realism to hideous materi- 
alism was not wholly mean and profitless. The doctrine 
of pure sensation was doomed to fall before the test which 
it expressly invited, the test of nature. But, in urging 
the infallibility of the test, it brought men to an intelli- 
gent study of phenomena, a study which, in the end, led to 
a faith sure-founded, whose depth and permanency the old 
faith in miracle could never have attained. 

Jacques." — Carlyle, The French Bevolution (Leipzig, 1851), II. 
256. 



100 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

But we have strayed far from the kindly, shrewd, and 
scholarly gentlemen who, unwittingly, kindled so hot a 
fire in the Avorld. Montaigne, whose rambling, egotistic, 
and irrelevant gossip is ever fresh and seldom tiresome, is 
pre-eminently friendly. What more delightful than to 
have known him, to have ridden with him on one of his 
horses that he loved, ^ through the beautiful Perigord that 
he loved, too ! Or what pleasanter than to have sat with 
him in the tower room that he has described minutely,^ to 
have watched him as he turned the leaves of a book, and to 
have listened as he talked with the full freedom of a mind 
well stored with anecdote and worldly knowledge. Or, as 
he paced back and forth in the narrow chamber, planning 
the essays whose easy flow makes manifest the ripened 
mind behind them,^ to have busied ourselves with spelling 
out the maxims with which he had adorned his walls. 
What a privilege to have been his companion in Eome dur- 
ing his live months' tarrying there, ^ prowling through the 
city without a cicerone, trusting to his jargon of Italian, 
concocted in the fashion that he merril}^ advises.^ For, 
while he was by no means learned, he had culture, and he 
loved Eome and Koman literature only a little less fondly 
than he loved himself. And had we been thus trans- 

1 " I do not willingly alight when I am once on horseback ; for it is 
the place where, whether well or sick, I find myself most at ease. 
Plato recommends it for health, and also Pliny says it is good for the 
stomach and the joints." — Hazlitt's 3Iontaigne, XLVIIL 134. 

2 Essais, Liv. III., Ch. IIL 

^ " I know not anywhere the book that seems less written. It is the 
language of conversation transferred to a book. Cut these words, and 
they would bleed; they are vascular and alive." — Emerson, Bep. 
Men., 160. 

4 See Hazlitt's trans, of A Diary of the Journey of M. de Montaigne 
into Italy, etc. 

s Essais, Liv. IL, Ch. XIL (p. 254 of Hazlir ). 



MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. 101 

planted, our modernity would in nowise have amazed him. 
A hearty spectator, he was no lubberly starer at the un- 
known. His was the well-balanced mind which is at home 
anywhere and in any age. " I love temperate and indiffer- 
ent natures," Florio's quaint translation makes him say.^ 
'' Immoderation towards good, if it offend me not, it amaz- 
eth and troubleth me, how I should call it. . . . A man 
may love virtue too much and demean himself in a good 
action." These words are the key to his nature, if, indeed, 
a character so frank and so complacent needs a key. In- 
temperance was the only vice that roused him to intemper- 
ate speech. 

Some one calls the Essays a proper bedside book; and 
rightly. They deal with humanity gowned and slippered, 
rid of the shamming of to-day, careless of the pretence of 
to-morrow, poised in a waking dream of irresponsibility. 
We all of us need, even more than we like, this undress 
period, this mental nakedness, stripped of the trappings of 
conventionality. No one puts us so gently into this mid- 
night state as does this rational, whimsical country-gentle- 
man, not over-nice in his language, not over-strait in his 
morals, but just in his human estimates. A homely, help- 
ful philosopher, abounding in friendliness, in wit, in 
charity."^ 

Such a nature, too, was Locke's. But he was no closet 
philosopher. Despite the hysterical estimate of Michelet,^ 
education owes little, it seems to me, to Montaigne, beyond 
what he did for it in inspiring Locke and E-ousseau. We 

1 Essayes, XXIX., Vol. II. 36. 

2 See his quaintly apologetic analysis of himself in the Essais, Liv. 
II., Ch. XVII., De la presumption. 

^ In Nos Fils : "... qn'il " (Locke) " est faible, sec, pan vre, loin, 
et de Pampleur de Rabelais, et de la vigueur de Montaigne ! De ces 
grands liommes a lui, quelle chute !" etc., p. 187. 



102 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

shall consider, later and together, the two treatises of 
Education, — that of Montaigne addressed to the Countess 
of Foix, that of Locke written for Mr. Clark. Their weight 
is much the same. But behind Montaigne's fragment we 
have nothing beyond his essays, — gay, shrewd, garrulous, 
— except the lovable man himself. Behind Locke's hasty 
notes, on the other hand, we have the great Essay concern- 
ing Human Understanding, we have its posthumous sequel, 
the Conduct of the Understanding, we have those monu- 
ments of free thought, the Letters on Toleration and the 
two Treatises of Government, and we have the experience 
of a learned man busied to his latest day in matters of 
public welfare.-^ 

A consumptive through inheritance, Locke was a life- 
long invalid. His entire career was dominated, active and 
fruitful though it was, by the necessities of constant self- 
nursing. He came of a good middle-class family in easy 
circumstances, and was reared in a strong but liberal Puri- 
tanism. Sent to Westminster School, he found it, as were 
all the public schools of his day, the abode of savages. 
Baited, pummelled, and made utterly wretched by these 
manly little heathen, he gained a hatred of gregarious edu- 
cation which never forsook him. A student at Christ 
Church, he obtained, without trouble, his master's degree, 
and, with a view to caring for his "crazy body," studied 
medicine there. After some diplomatic service abroad, he 
obtained a scholarship, that carried with it a pension and a 
residence in the college until such time as he should choose 
to marry. 

1 The first Letter on Toleration appeared in Latin, at Tergou, in 
1684 ; the Essay concerning Human Understanding, although begun 
in 1671, was not published until 1689 ; the Treatises of Government 
were issued, for political effect, in 1690 ; while the Conduct of the 
Understanding was not published until two years after Locke's death. 



MOlilTAIGNE AND LOCKE. 103 

7Vhile at Oxford, Locke met the first Earl Shaftesbury, 
then Lord Ashley. That nobleman, being the victim of 
an internal abscess, was, in the absurd fashion of his day, 
"drinking the waters." In some slight service connected 
with his Oxford potations, Locke came under his notice, 
interested him, and, within a few years, was domesticated 
with him. He saved Ashley's life by draining the ab- 
scess, and was made, thereupon, physician to his lordship. 
But he soon became more than this. His offices grew to 
embrace, also, those of secretary, tutor, and confidential 
adviser.^ 

But, as we know, Shaftesbury fell, rose again for a fleet- 
ing period, was led into Monmouth plottings, fled to Hol- 
land, and escaped the scaffold by dying in his bed. The 
interval of six years between Shaftesbury's two terms of 
power — times when he required the constant service and 
counsel of his factotum — was passed by Locke chiefly on 
the Continent, where he travelled, studied at Montpellier, 
and acted as tutor to a rich young Englishman. After 
Shaftesbury's final downfall, it was necessary, for Locke's 
safety, that he should flee to Holland. There, in rather 

1 When it is a question of marrying the Earl's only and sickly son, 
it is to Locke that the delicate mission of wife -hunting is entrusted. 
He negotiates successfully, and to general satisfaction, for the hand 
of the Lady Dorothy Manners. His hovering care of this young 
couple and of their eldest son, who, as the third Earl Shaftesbury, was 
to be the famous author of the Characteristics, and whose educa- 
tion was placed wholly in his hands, is both pretty and droll. He 
stays at home and minds this noble baby, while its parents go a-visit- 
ing ; in the Earl's absence, he takes care of the household ; when the 
Earl, as Lord Chancellor, goes forth in state, Locke walks bareheaded 
by his coach's side. To these various, and, with our present concep- 
tion of him, humble duties, he brings the true dignity of the philoso- 
pher, being equally ready to compose letters of state or to help in the 
guiding of the great Cabal. 



104 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

a timorous way, lie dodged about, avoiding the proscription 
that the Dutch, we imagine, would have been slow to obey. 
We find him now at Amsterdam, again at Utrecht, and 
finally at Rotterdam, everywhere making friends among the 
learned whom Holland had gathered into asylum, and, best 
of all, finishing the great essay on the Understanding. In 
1686 and 1687 he has strange visitors at Rotterdam, and 
makes secret journeyings thence. These, in the following 
year, are explained when the successful Revolution calls 
William of Orange to England, and Locke, a few months 
later, follows, an honored courtier, in the Princess's train. 
Thenceforward, so far as his health permits, his life is fort- 
unate and active. He has offers of embassies and other 
posts of dignity which he is too ill to accept actively and 
too honest to take as sinecures. He writes, in a letter of 
earlier date,^ to a friend who urges him to marry: — 

"My health, which you are so kind to in your wishes, 
is the only mistress I have a long time courted, and is so 
coy a one that I think it will take up the remainder of my 
days to obtain her good graces and keep in her good humor." 

This uncertain mistress was, too truly, the ruler of his 
later life, which was spent, so much of it as was possible, 
in London, the rest at Gates, in Essex, where he sought 
refuge from cold and fog with his close friends, the 
Mashams.^ At their house he died, serenely and cheer- 
fully, as he had lived. He wrote in Latin his own epi- 
taph.^ 

" Stay, traveller : near this place lies John Locke. If 
you ask what sort of man he was, the answer is that he was 
contented with his modest lot. Bred a scholar, he used his 

1 In June, 1677, to Dr. John Mapletoft. See Fox Bourne, Life, 
I. 369. 

2 See Fox Bourne, Life, Ch. XII. (II. 212). 

3 King, Life, 266. 



MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. 105 

studies to devote himself to truth alone. This you may 
learn from his writings; which will show you anything else 
that is to be said about him more faithfully than the doubt- 
ful eulogies of an epitaph. His virtues, if he had any, were 
too slight for him to offer them to his own credit or as an 
example to you. Let. his vices be buried with him. Of 
good life you have an example, should you desire it, in the 
gospel; of vice, would there were none for you; of mortal- 
ity, surely (and may you profit by it) you have one here 
and everywhere. That he was born on the 29 of Aug. in 
the year of our Lord, 1632, and that he died on the 28 of 
Oct. in the year of our Lord, 1704, this tablet, which itself 
will quickly perish, is a record." 

A summary as true as it is modest. His writings do 
exhibit him, not as Montaigne shows himself, confidential 
through very garrulity and self-conceit, but simply, naively, 
because, through enthusiasm, he put himself into them, 
and because that self was pure, single, and manly. The 
world, having grown better, permits of the existence, now, 
of many men like Locke. In the days of the Stuarts and 
Louis XIV. they were rare. We may believe, then, that 
no small part of Locke's influence was founded upon his 
possession of the homely virtues of honesty, sincerity, and 
simplicity. These characteristics cemented, without doubt, 
the friendships that his fame and learning brought. But 
he was much more than a good man, rare in his generation. 
That he was a physicist of no mean ability, the nature of 
his friendship with Boyle, Leibnitz, Huyghens, and Xewton 
shows. That he was a physician of insight far above the 
common, the public praises of his close friend, Sydenham,^ 

1 "Nosti prseterea, quam huic niese methodo suffragantem habeam, 
qui earn intimius per omnia perspexerat, utrique nostrum conjimctissi- 
mum Dominmn Johannem Lock ; quo quidem viro, sive ingenio 
judicioque acri et subacto, sive etiam antiquis (hoc est optimis) mori- 



106 THE EDUCATIOI^AL IDEAL. 

testify. He was a theologian, too, of such power that Lim- 
borch and the Dutch divines sought his counsel. Finally, 
as a philosopher and statesman, he ranks among the great- 
est in England. 

In all these departments of learning he wrote somewhat 
extensively, although the years of his authorship were the 
last of his life. Our aim calls for an examination of only 
a limited range — the Essay concerning Human Understand- 
ing, that on the Conduct of the Understanding, his Thoughts 
on Education, and a fragment entitled Of Study. The last 
two, although nominally of directest value to school work, 
are, broadly speaking, of less importance than the great 
Essay. The Thoughts materially influenced methods of 
teaching, but the Essay changed the foundations of educa- 
tion itself. 

Locke devotes the first of the four books of his Essay ^ 
to a proof of his proposition that the mind possesses no 
innate ideas. He premises that the mind, using a com- 
parison suggested by Aristotle's Tabula rasa,^ is "white 
paper," or employing a more vivid simile, — 

bus, vix superiorem quenquam inter eos qui nunc sunt homines reper- 
tum iri confido, paucissimos certe pares." Quoted by Brown, Sjmre 
Hours, od ser., 42. 

1 The Essay concerning Human UnderstandiJig has been the centre 
of so much discussion, holds, in fact, so conspicuous a place in Eng- 
lish literature, that it is with much hesitation I venture to discuss it. 
It is, however, essential to an understanding of Locke's place in 
education. 

Not until this chapter was in press was I able to see Professor 
Eraser's splendid edition of the Essay. This, in its Prolegomena and 
notes, is a mine of valuable and scholarly commentary. 

2 "The" (Aristotle's) "metaphor is not to be pressed as though 
it implied a purely empirical account of thought and knowledge. The 
comparison refers simply to one point, and it is misused when taken as 
an equivalent to Locke's white paper or other sensualist similes. All 



MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. 107 

"Metliinks the understanding is not much unlike a closet 
wholly shut from light, with only some little opening left, 
to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things 
without."! 

Upon this blankness, as upon fair wax, impressions are 
made, or into this vacancy, as into an empty room, sensa- 
tions enter from the external world. "In experience," 
Locke declares, " all our knowledge is founded, and from 
that it ultimately derives itself." ^ This is pure material- 
ism ; and had Locke limited himself to this narrow position, 
had he not permitted, as we shall see, exceptions to this 
rule of knowledge, either he must soon have given up 
his essay, or he must have been led into demonstrations and 
assertions wholly contrary to his real belief. 

Fortunately, not only was he inconsistent, not only did 
he use the term " innate " with great license, but he at once 
proceeded to endow the mind with that activity which, just 
before, he had distinctly denied to it. The mind is not 
inert, he asserts, but, upon receiving sensations from with- 
out, "turns its view inward upon itself and observes its 
own actions about those ideas it has," (and) "takes from 
them other ideas, which are as capable to be the objects of 
its contemplation as any of those it received from foreign 
things."^ 

In other words, man, as he imagines him, is capable 

that Aristotle means to bring out by his comparison is that just as a 
sheet of paper may be regarded as containing a priori and implicitly 
all that will be written on it, so similarly the intellect or reason may 
be viewed as implicitly containing its objects, vMch like itself are 
rational.'''' — Edwin Wallace, Aristotle'' s Psychology (Cambridge, 
1882), 103. 

^ Essay, Bk. II., Ch. XL, § 17. 

2 Essay, Bk. II., Ch. I., § 2. 

3 Essay, Bk. 11. , Ch. VL, § 1. 



108 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

of inward as well as of outward sensation. More than 
this, he is able to analyze internal sensations and to educe 
others from them. Allow to the mind this power to reason 
about itself, and its wonders are explained. But whence 
this power? Locke does not say; still less does he try, to 
reconcile its existence with his rejection of innate ideas. 
He neither acknowledges nor analyzes the power which 
transmutes sensation into thought. In his eagerness to 
maintain his proposition that the mind is but a bundle of 
experiences, he will not see that his position is untenable. 
Valiantly does he close his eyes, admirably does he expand 
his wilful premise, boldly does he enter upon the demon- 
stration of good and evil, of liberty and faith, of infinity 
and eternity. Not until the ninth chapter of the fourth 
book is he brought finally to bay.^ Here he comes to a 
point where he must definitely answer the question. How 
do I know that I am? He sees plainly that no outward, no 
inward sensation — as he limits them — can give a satisfac- 
tory reply. He understands that upon the reality of the 
ego the whole logic of his sensational doctrine rests. And, 
thus confronted, he does not hesitate to sacrifice consistency 
to faith. " Let us proceed now," he begins,^ mentally brac- 
ing himself, "to inquire concerning our knowledge of the 
existence of things and how we come by it. I say then, 
that we have the knowledge of our own existence by intui- 
tion." Thus far his statement is consonant with his theory, 
for he has limited intuition to the mind's act of agreement 
with its ideas. But, growing bolder, he continues,^ "We 
perceive it so plainly and so certainly that it neither needs 
or is capable of any proof; for nothing can be more evident 

1 This book was evidently written, liowever, earlier than the other 
three. 

'■'Essmj, Bk. IV.,Ch. IX., §2. 

3 Ibid., § 3. See also Bk. IV., Ch. XVII., § 14. 



MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. 109 

to US than our own existence. ... If I doubt of all other 
things, that very doubt makes me perceive my own exist- 
ence, ^ and will not suffer me to doubt of that. . . . Ex- 
perience then convinces us that we have an intuitive 
knowledge of our own existence, and an internal, mfallible 
perceptio7i that we are." 

Alas for fallible humanity and the doughty Mr. Locke ! 
Have we followed him through hundreds of pages, wherein 
he tells us that there are not, can not be, must not be, 
innate ideas, only to find that we ourselves know that we 
are through an internal, infallible perception? Has he 
devoted one entire book to showing, in masterly fashion, 
the use and abuse of words only to lead us, himself, into 
this verbal pit? In acknowledging the infallibility of even 
one sensation, he has sacrificed his logical premise, but he 
has saved his soul. The God that he educes while denying 
innate ideas, is a mere mathematical formula, a finite series 
to infinity. The Deity whom he acknowledges after he has 
granted the existence of infallible intuition, is the God of 
the agnostic, as certain as he is incomprehensible.^ 

1 Cf. Descartes' s famous proposition, Cogito ergo sum. 

2 Cardinal Newman, looking only at the relentless logic of sensa- 
tionalism, says, rightly from that point of view {The Idea of a Uni- 
versWj defined and illustrated ; London, 1889, 319) : " Locke is scarcely 
an honor to us" (meaning England) "in the standard of truth, grave 
and manly as he is." But Locke himself, knowing himself, and that 
his knowledge was higher than his reason, writes {An Examination 
of P. Malebranche^s Opinion of Seeing All Things in God, § 52) : "I 
. . . content myself with my ignorance which roundly thinks thus : 
God is a simple being, omniscient, that knows all things possible ; 
and omnipotent, that can do or make all things possible. But how he 
knows, or how he makes, I do not conceive : his ways of knowing as 
well as his ways of creating are to me incomprehensible ; and, if it 
were not so, I should not think him to be God, or to be perfecter in 
knowledge than I am." See ante, 97. 



110 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

I have made this long digression, partly to enter a plea 
— poor enough — for an author who is unjustly under the 
ban of atheism, but mainly to show that the fallacies in his 
reasoning, fundamental as they are, seriously affect ques- 
tions of higher ethics only. It is enough for ordinary peda- 
gogic use that we try to understand the mind and the growth 
of the minor morals. We need not deal with primal causes 
or with ultimate problems of faith and free-will. We may 
avail ourselves, in short, of Locke's reasoning, and of his 
results, without concerning ourselves with the truth or error 
of his premises. This pedagogics has done, greatly to its 
profit and advancement. 

Accepting, therefore, Locke's theory merely as a working 
hypothesis, we have, in the last three books of his Essay, 
an admirable treatise on psychology, the first formal dis- 
cussion of modern times, and one that profoundly influenced 
the progress of education. Let us look at its main argu- 
ments. 

Having proved, as he believes, that the mind is origi- 
nally blank, Locke shows that it can be furnished in two 
ways only : through sensation — that is, through the im- 
press of outward phenomena upon the senses ; and through 
reflection — 'that is, to use his own words, through "the 
notice which the mind takes of its own operations and the 
manner of them."^ From sensation and reflection, singly 
or combined, result ideas, and upon ideas the progress and 
history of the mind depend. Locke tries, though not always 
successfully, to separate ideas, which are the images given 
by sensation and reflection, from qualities, which are the 
actual essences or natures of the idea-exciting phenomena.^ 
Qualities are, of course, beyond our comprehension. 

^ Essay, Bk. XL, Ch. I., § 4. 

2 See Essay, Bk. II., Ch. VIII., § 7 e« seq. 



MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. Ill 

From simple ideas, lie maintains, the mind produces by 
combination, — that is, by a process akin to that of the calcu- 
lus, — ideas of space, of duration, and even of infinity and 
eternity. Complex ideas, involved and multiform as they 
are, he asserts to be but combinations and associations of 
simple ideas, "bottomed," ^ to use a favorite word of his, in 
a simple sensation, in a simple reflection, or in a sensation 
and a reflection combined.^ In the third category he places 
pleasure and pain and their derivatives, good and evil. 
Complex ideas, he says, may be comprehended under three 
classes, substances, modes, and relations, or, roughly speak- 
ing, ideas of things, ideas of action, and ideas of com- 
parison. 

We cannot follow him into the maze — which he yet 
makes reasonably clear — of the classification of ideas. 
But this sorting and naming leagL him, farther than he had 
primarily expected, into the discussion of words, which are 
the expression of ideas. He devotes, therefore, the entire 
third book to an analysis of language. With righteous 
wrath he shows the vain subtleties o:^ the scholastics to be 
but foolish quibbling. "Notwithstanding these learned 
disputants, these all-knowing doctors," he exclaims,^ in an 
outburst against them, " it was to the unscholastic states- 
man that the governments of the world owed their peace, 
defence and liberties ; and from the illiterate and contemned 
mechanic (a name of disgrace) that they received the im- 
provements of useful arts. Nevertheless, this artificial 
ignorance and learned gibberish prevailed mightily in these 
last ages, by the interest and artifice of those, who found no 
easier way to that pitch of authority and dominion they 
have attained, than by amusing the men of business and 

1 Cf . Conduct of the Understanding, §§ 42, 43. 
^ Essay, Bk. II., Ch. XII. et seq. 
^ Ibid., Bk. III., Ch. X., §9. 



112 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

ignorant with hard words, or employing the ingenious 
and idle in intricate disputes about unintelligible terms, 
and holding them perpetually entangled in that endless 
labyrinth." 

Defining very exactly the use of words and the nature 
and causes of their abuse, he thus sums up^ man's duty to 
his tongue : — 

" 1st. Every one should take care to use no word without 
a signification, no vocal sign without some idea he had in 
his mind, and would express by it. 2nd. The idea he uses a 
sign for should be clear and distinct; all the simple ideas 
it is made up of, if it be complex, should be settled. 3rd. 
These ideas must be accommodated as near as we can to 
the common signification of the word in its ordinary use. 
It is this propriety of speech which gives the stamp render 
which words are current,^ and it is not for every private 
man to alter their value at pleasure." 

In the fourth book, he proceeds to the demonstration of 
knowledge, which he limits unwarrantably by defining it as 
nothing but the perception of the agreement or disagree- 
ment of any two ideas. ^ He soon finds it necessary, as I 
have shown, to acknowledge the existence of "infallible 
intuition," and, thenceforward, his argument wavers, clutch- 
ing first at his material, then at his spiritual, logic. 

It is unreasonable to ask for a flawless treatise, however, 
in the seventeenth century, upon so elusive a science as 
psychology. The point attained to-day is not so high that 
Locke's seems very far below it. Crude, insufiicient, and 
self -contradictory as he often appears, the marvel is that 
he was not more faulty. 

These major things, at least, his Essay did. It proved 

1 Essaij, Bk. III., Ch. XI., § 8 e« seq. 
^ assay, Bk. IV., Ch. I., §2. 



MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. 113 

and established the positions of earlier educational re- 
formers, by reaching their conclusions regarding the dis- 
cipline and the capabilities of the mind through a scientific 
though empirical reasoning ; it showed the possibility and 
necessity of applying laboratory methods to the investi- 
gation of mental phenomena, thereby inaugurating that 
tremendous advance which has come to the educational ideal 
through the study of psychology; it demonstrated a fact 
which had been almost unknown or neglected, that accuracy 
and clearness, both in thought and in speech, are prime 
factors in the solving of all human problems ; finally, it 
established the compass of the mind, on the one hand defin- 
ing the limits of mental competence and, on the other hand, 
opening up new fields wherein the mind could profitably 
exercise itself. 

Locke's main emphasis was upon common-sense. His 
chief object in dealing with the human mind at all was to 
bring it down to a level where it might be examined, where 
its competence to this investigation, its incompetence to that 
speculation, might be clearly shown. The subtleties of the 
Schoolmen, the chimeras of the alchemists, the jargon and 
fictions of the pre-Renaissance philosophers, all arose, 
mainly, from ignorance of the true limits of the mind. So 
long as this ignorance existed, just so long would these 
barren parasites eat up the substance of knowledge, deform 
its image, and hinder its growth. Locke simply continued 
that warfare against " Idols " Avhich Bacon had begun. 
More than this, he examined and described the "New In- 
strument " Avhich Bacon vainly sought to discover and dis- 
close. Still more, in showing the limitations of that 
" Instrument " in certain directions, he made plain its 
enormous powers in other paths hitherto hardly suspected. 

In this single essay Locke crystallized the work of two 
hundred years, and framed the skeleton of scientific educa- 



114 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

tion. The true pedagogic way, before him a matter of 
vision and speculation, was by him established as a matter 
of definite experiment and research. Investigating scien- 
tifically the action of the mind, he reached conclusions 
agreeing with the a priori theories of Rabelais and Come- 
nius. The "New Instrument" of Bacon Locke showed to 
be the searching mind itself, ordered and developed. Ob- 
ject-teaching, the inductive process, self-activity, all those 
pedagogic helps at which the earlier reformers had guessed, 
Locke, from the nature of the mind, showed to be fit and 
necessary tools of teaching. As the typical book of a new 
era in education, as a distinct and active first-cause in phil- 
osophical thought, the Essay is colossal. 

The Conduct of the Understanding, which follows nat- 
urally upon the Essay, is built upon less formal lines. 
Short and pithy, it invites study, even by those to whom 
the lengthy Essay is too much. A sentence from it here 
and there will serve to show Locke's vigorous style. 

"We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough 
to cram ourselves with a great load of collections ; unless 
we chew them over again, they will not give us strength 
and nourishment." ^ 

"It is undoubtedly a wrong use of my understanding to 
make it the rule and measure of another man's." ^ 

"General observations drawn from particulars are the 
jewels of knowledge, comprehending great store in a little 
room ; but they are therefore to be made with the greater 
care and caution, lest, if we take counterfeit for true, our 
loss and shame be the greater when our stock comes to a 
severe scrutiny."^ 

"God has made the intellectual world harmonious and 
beautiful without us, but it will never come into our heads 

1 § 20, Heading. 2 § 23, Theology. ^ § 25, Haste. 



MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. 115 

at once. We must bring it home piecemeal, and there set 
it up by our own industry, or else we shall have nothing 
but darkness and a chaos within. " ^ 

We are ready now to examine Locke's Thoughts on Educa- 
tion, and, in connection with it, Montaigne's essay, De V In- 
stitution des enfans. Both of these were written " to oblige 
a friend," and Locke's was published to oblige other friends. 
Therefore they are written ad hominem, and are limited to 
the problem of how to educate a gentleman. The common 
people were beneath notice in the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries, except by men of Luther's robust temper. 
"Knowledge, madam," writes Montaigne,'^ with a courtly 
mental flourish towards his correspondant, the comtesse 
Diane de Foix, " is a great ornament and a tool of marvellous 
worth, especially to those of your exalted station. Truly, 
it fails of its right use in low, base hands; it is more eager 
to lend its aid in the conduct of a war, in the ruling of a 
nation, or in the practice of diplomacy, than in bolstering 
dialectics, in arguing a law suit, or in compounding pills." 
Says Locke,^ in the Epistle Dedicatory: "The well Educat- 
ing of their Children is so much the Duty and Concern of 
Parents, and the Welfare and Prosperity of the Nation so 
much depends on it, that I would have every one lay it 
seriously to Heart, and ... set his helping Hand to pro- 
mote every where that Way of training up Youth, with 
regard to their several Conditions, which is the easiest, 
shortest, and likeliest to produce virtuous, useful, and able 
Men in their distinct callings ; tho' that most to be taken 
Care of is the Gentleman's Calling. For if those of that 
Rank are by their Education once set right, they will quickly 
bring all the rest into Order." 

1 § 37, Presumption. 2 Essais, Liv. I., Ch. XXV., IT 9. 

3 Thoughts, p. Ixiii. 



116 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

It would have been superhuman for these men, bred as 
they were, to have condescended to the public school. 
Their horizon includes only the tutor as educator, and the 
gentleman as pupil. ^ 

But Locke's ideal teacher fills a role quite opposite to that 
of Montaigne's. Both, in Montaigne's words,^ "would 
. . . choose a tutor whose head is well tempered rather 
than well filled. Eequire both qualities in him, but of the 
two, rather manners and understanding than learning." 
But Montaigne is fearful of the warm and tender atmos- 
phere of home, and would use the tutor at once as a shield 
from the indulgence of parents and as a guide to lead boys, 
open-eyed, into the wicked world. " I should like to have 
the pupil," he says,^ "begin to travel in his infancy, espe- 
cially — thereby killing two birds with one stone — into 
neighboring countries where his tongue, while it is yet 
supple, may be formed to new languages." Locke, on the 
other hand, regards the tutor as a screen to ward off mun- 
dane contamination, and as a map of society to point out 
pitfalls to the child without tearing him from the shelter 
of home to expose him to the temptations of the world. 
"'Tis Virtue then, direct Virtue,^^ he maintains,^ "which 
is the hard and valuable part to be aimed at in Education. 
. . . This is the solid and substantial Good which Tutors 

1 Locke's abhorrence of the endowed school was life-long. "Take 
a Boy from the Top of a Grammar-School," he says (Thoughts, § 70), 
" and one of the same age bred in his Father's Family, and bring them 
into good Company together, and then see which of the two will have 
the more manly Carriage, and address himself with the more becoming 
Assurance to Strangers. Here I imagine the School-Boy's Confidence 
will either fail or discredit him ; and if it be such as fits him only for 
the Conversation of Boys, he were better to be without it." 

2 Essais, Ch. XXV., t 11. 
s Ibid., t 19. 

* Thoughts, § 70. 



MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. 117 

should not only read Lectures and talk of, but the Labour 
and Art of Education should furnish the Mind with, and 
fasten there, and never cease till the young Man had a true 
Kelish of it, and plac'd his Strength, his Glory, and his 
Pleasure in it; . . . therefore, I cannot but prefer breed- 
ing of a young Gentleman at home, in his Father's Sight, 
under a good Governour, as much the best and safest way to 
this great and main End of Education ; " . . . (but) " I must 
here take the Liberty to mind Parents of this one Thing, 
viz. That he that will have his Son have a Respect for 
him and his Orders, must himself have a great Eeverence 
for his Son." ^ 

The two authors agree in strongly endorsing a thorough 
physical training. Locke's own sufferings taught him the 
value of a sound body, and he advocates early and contin- 
ued hardening. "Use your children as the honest Farmers 
and substantial Yeomen do theirs. . . . Most Children's 
Constitutions are either spoil'd, or at least harm'd, by 
Cockering and Tenderness ; " ^ and he lays down, for guid- 
ance,^ these "few and easily observable Rules: Plenty of 
open Air, Exercise, and Sleep, plain Diet, no Wine or 
Strong Drink, and very little or no Physick, not too warm 
and strait Clothing, especially the Head and Feet kept 
cold, and the Feet often us'd to cold Water and expos'd 
to wet." 

Montaigne is no less strenuous for a rude training as a 
means to perfect health. Locke, more apt to self-denial 
than the pleasure-loving Gascon, makes, at this point, an 
obvious analogy.^ "As the Strength of the Body lies 
chiefly in being able to endure Hardships, so also does that 
of the Mind. And the great Principle and Foundation of 
all Virtue and Worth is plac'd in this : that a Man is able 

1 Thoughts, §'71. 2 75^-(7,^ § 4. 3 7^,^-^.^ § 30. 4 75^-^.^ § 33. 



118 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

to deny himself his own Desires, cross his own Inclina- 
tions, and purely follow what Eeason directs as best, tho' 
the Appetite lean the Other Way." 

Assured of the sound body, they strive, secondarily, for 
the sound mind. This they secure by cultivating the under- 
standing. " Children must be treated as rational creatures, " 
says Locke. ^ "Let him know that he knows," says Mon- 
taigne, and, continuing, "It is the understanding which 
sees and hears. Learn, if you can, to manage a horse, a 
lance, a lute, or your voice, without practice; but that is 
what those would have us do who would teach us to think 
and speak without giving us practice in speaking and think- 
ing."^ Says Locke, pursuing the same idea, "I can no 
more know a thing by another man's understanding, than 
I can see by another man's eyes. So much I know, so 
much truth I have got ; so far I am in the right, as I do 
really know myself; whatever other men have, it is in their 
possession, it belongs not to me, nor can be communicated 
to me but by making me alike knowing; it is a treasure 
that cannot be lent or made over." ^ 

This is the true spirit of education. This is the princi- 
ple that Montaigne partially, Locke fully, enunciated. 
The details into which they expanded it are of little 
moment. They are antiquated, of course, but so are the 
details of John's education of yesterday in regard to 
Henry's education of to-day. Education is a mobile art, 
eternally in flux. If the groundwork of principle be but 
secure, the minutice of its application will develop sponta- 
neously with each pupil taught. Cultivate the divine under- 
standing within the child, going to nature for guidance and 
inspiration, — that is the spirit of the rational education 

1 Thoughts, § 54. 2 Essais, Liv. I., Ch. XXV., t 16. 

3 Of Study. See King, Life, 106. 



MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. 119 

which was preached by both these men. " Do not imprison 
the boy," pleads Montaigne ; " do not abandon him to the rage 
and gloom of a fanatic pedagogue. Do not curb his spirit 
by binding him down to a hell of work, in the fashion of 
the age, fourteen or fifteen hours a day, like a porter." . . . 
"This great world ... is the mirror into which, to know 
ourselves, we must look. Let this be my scholar's book. 
To him a closet, a garden, the table, and his bed, solitude, 
society, morning and evening, all hours will be the same, 
all places will be his school. Play, even, and exercise, 
will be no small portion of his studying, — racing, wrest- 
ling, music, dancing, hunting, riding, and feats of arms. . . . 
It is not a soul, it is not a body, that we are training; it is 
a man."^ 

"When I consider," says Locke, ^ "what ado is made 
about a little Latin and Greek, how many years are spent 
in it, and what a noise and Business it makes to no Pur- 
pose, I can hardly forbear thinking that the Parents of 
Children still live in fear of the School-master's rod, which 
they look on as the only instrument of Education; as a 
Language or two to be its whole Business. . . . What, 
then? say you, would you not have him write and read? 
Not so, not so fast, T beseech you. Keading and Writing 
and Learning I allow to be necessary, but yet not the chief 
Business. Learning must be had, but in the second Place, 
as subservient only to greater Qualities. . . . Secure his 
Innocence, cherish and nurse up the good, and gently cor- 
rect and weed out any bad Inclinations, and settle him in 
good Habits. This is the main Point, and this being pro- 
vided for. Learning may be had into the Bargain, and that, 
as I think, at a very easy rate." 

Both these humane men regarded with horror the cru- 



Liv. I., Ch. XXV., t .38. 2 Thoughts, § 147. 



120 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

elties that made torture-chambers of the schoolrooms. 
"Away, I say," Montaigne cries with unwonted vehe- 
mence;^ "away with violence and force. . . . Approach 
one of our schools. You hear only screams and chil- 
dren beseeching and masters drunk with rage. What 
way is this to arouse an appetite for learning in these 
tender and timid minds, to present this horrid image of it, 
armed with whips? Iniquitous and shameful spectacle! 
. . . Decorate our schoolrooms with flowers and leaves, 
not with bundles of bloody rods." Locke is no less severe 
in his denunciation ; but, on the other hand, he avoids the 
worship of rewards as an incentive to learning, that mistaken 
cult which has proved so great a bane to sound, education. 

As to the details of instruction, both are advocates of 
strict and careful method, believing it to be a principle of 
exceeding importance. Latin they would teach as a modern 
language is imparted, by daily speech and practice. Mon- 
taigne gives ^ an extremely interesting account of the exper- 
iment tried by his father upon him, permitting him to 
hear no language except Latin until he had passed his sixth 
year, even the servants being compelled to address him in 
that tongue. Locke eagerly accepts this method, and hopes, 
by its adoption, to save years of study to the child, years 
that he would fill up with geography, astronomy, chronol- 
ogy, anatomy, geometry, and some parts of history. Locke's 
attitude towards history is vacillating and whimsical, quite 
other than that of Montaigne, who commends it strongly 
provided it be rightly taught, not as a chronicle of war, but 
as a record of human ex|)erience. Locke has no patience 
with the prevailing fashion of requiring pupils to write 
long moral themes, and to compose bad Latin verses. 
Rather would he devote this time to a modern language, or 

1 Essais, Liv. I., Ch. XXV., t 41. ^ jEssais, Liv. I., Ch. XXV. 



MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. 121 

perhaps — for he expresses distrust, even of the " incom- 
parable Mr. Newton " — to natural philosophy. Greek he 
boldly discards, as a waste of time for any except scholars. 
Finally, he would have boys taught all the manly arts, as, 
for example, fencing, wrestling, riding, and dancing, and, 
wonder of wonders, he would have all young gentlemen 
learn at least one trade. In this he forestalls the later 
apostles of manual training as, in another place, he makes 
general prophecy of the kindergarten. "I have thought," 
he remarks,^ ''that if Playthings were fitted to this pur- 
pose, as they are usually to none, Contrivances might be 
made to teach Children to read, whilst they thought they 
were only playing. . . . Children, if you observe them, 
take abundance of Pains to learn several Games, which, if 
they should be enjoined them, they would abhor as a Task 
and Business." 

There is much more in these Thoughts of Locke's. 
Especially are the sections on regimen, on family relations, 
and on the management of children, wise and helpful, 
though abounding in what to us learned moderns are mere 
truisms. No one with even a slight interest in questions 
of education, but will be glad to have read these homely, 
rough notes of this wise old bachelor inspired to the train- 
ing of other men's children. 

But to return to Montaigne. He, too, rejects the Greek 
and Latin taught by the humanists as "fine acquisitions 
which we buy too dear." Languages, learned naturally, 
he approves, and any other study that tends to a broad 
humanity. Philosophy, he asserts, is the beginning and 
end of education; not the thorny wrangling of the schools, 
but a real x)hilosophy, a real love of wisdom. " Cultivate 
an honest curiosity to inquire into everything," he writes.^ 

1 Thoughts, § 150. 2 Essais, Liv. I., Ch. XXV., t 26 and 30. 



122 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

" Among the liberal arts begin with the art that makes us 
free. All serve in some way, as does everything about us, 
towards our instruction, but choose first that which aids 
us most directly." 

Freedom and self-reliance, those are the watchwords of 
these two marvellously "modern" men. Expansion, real 
education, drawing out, widening out, that is the burden 
of their preaching; and voices in the wilderness theirs 
were! Narrowness, bigotry, flij^pancy, inertia, were to 
reign until Eousseau should come, and even his voice was 
to fall upon deaf ears in England. Perhaps Montaigne had 
visions of this long night of self-absorption, peopled by 
folly and fanaticism, when he wrote : ^ " We are contracted 
and shut in by self, and our vision extends no farther than 
our noses. Socrates, being asked whence he came, did not 
answer, from Athens, but from the world. He, Avhose im- 
agination was richest and broadest, claimed the universe 
as his dwelling-place and held acquaintance, friendliness, 
and relationship, with humanity; not like us, who look 
only downwards. When the vines are nipped, in my vil- 
lage, by the frost, my priest thinks the wrath of God is upon 
the human race, and believes that the pip has seized the 
cannibals. . . . When it hails upon our heads, the whole 
universe seems swallowed up in storm. We all of us fall 
unwittingly into this error, an error of great and evil conse- 
quence. But he who gazes, with right perspective at this 
mighty image of our mother, Nature, in her simple majesty, 
who discerns in her aspect her limitless and inexhaustible 
variety, who sees himself therein, nay, not only himself, 
but an entire kingdom, as nothing greater than the marking 
of a point, he alone views things in their right proportion." 

Again he writes : ^ — 

1 Essais, t 28. 2 j^ici,^ ^ 33. 



MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. 123 

"The signal mark of wisdom is unruffled joy. She calms 
the tempests of the soul, and teaches hunger and fever how 
to laugh, not by means of imaginary epicycles, but through 
plain and normal reason ; her end is virtue, who is not, as 
the scholastics say, seated on the top of a high mountain, 
rough and inaccessible; those who have sought her declare, 
on the contrary, that she dwells in a fertile and flowery 
plain, with all good things around her; and that the jour- 
ney thither, if one but go aright, is through shady paths, 
turf -carpeted, and filled with fragrant blossoms." 



124 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE JANSENISTS AND FENELON. 

The Child has a Heart to be Developed. 

the roman catholic church ; the reformation ; the re-formation 
in the church of rome ; loyola ; the order of jesus ; its 

MAIN principles; ITS ATTITUDE TOWARDS EDUCATION; THE "RATIO 

8tudi0rum " ; its method and aims ; the jesuit education ; 
its defects ; its advantages ; its moral bases ; their false- 
ness ; the jansenist controversy ; its results ; its leaders ; 
port-royal ; the jansenist education ; its foundations ; its 
influence; the "little schools"; their spirit; their 

METHODS ; contrasted WITH THE JESUIT SCHOOLS ; THE TEXT- 
books ; the court of louis xiv. ; fenelon ; tutor to the 
"little dauphin"; his methods; his writings; influence 

UPON him of port-royal ; MADAME DE MAINTENON ; SAINT-CYR ; 
its INFLUENCE UPON EDUCATIONAL GROWTH. 

Having considered the phase of educational reform 
which was coincident with the Protestant movement, we 
must go back to the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
in order to study that important, but too often despised, 
factor in educational growth, the Eoman Catholic Church. 
The Eeformation was not the cause, it was one of the 
effects, of an extended moral awakening, and the sudden 
and marked advance in educational ideals which followed 
it was its brother, not its child. Europe was seeking free- 
dom in every direction, whether in religion, in government, 
or in thought, and this particular phase of growth, though 
different in its results, was not less marked inside the 



THE JANSENISTS AND FENELON. 125 

Church than outside. While the Reformation gave free 
growth to tendencies which for years had been straining at 
the bonds of Rome, it none the less emancipated that Church 
itself, securing to it a strength and a buoyancy which, 
through its own corruption, had been fast disappearing. 

Although Luther drew from the Church of Rome much 
of her best material, he tore away, at the same time, the 
incubus of corruption which had been perverting and de- 
stroying the Catholic body. The upheaval within the 
Church differed from that without, however, in that the 
new faith accepted the spirit of democracy, while the old 
not only clung to feudal principles, but re-founded itself 
upon a military hierarchy. 

When the smoke lifted from the battle-field of schism, 
and the Roman Church could seek the causes of her defeat, 
it was plain that failure had arisen chiefly from lack of 
organization, or, rather, from an antiquated organization 
weighed down by a burden of corrujDtion. Recognizing 
this, had she proceeded to adapt herself to new conditions, 
had ^ she re-formed herself upon broad lines of humanity 
and freedom, creating a great commonwealth of Christian- 
ity, she might have done much towards averting further 
schism and checking disaffection. She chose, instead, 
clutching at immediate power, to X3ut herself upon a mili- 
tary footing, to tight for her lost supremacy, and, more than 
this, to carry a war of aggression into new territory. Fort- 
unately for her, having made this choice of action, she 
found sprung up in her midst a body of picked warriors, a 
standing army of the faith, trained by a man peculiarly 
fitted to the task. Ignatius Loyola, the roystering soldier 
of the Emperor, had been transformed,^ by a seeming mira- 

1 For a graphic account of Loyola's conversion see Ranke, Hist, of 
the Popes, I. 181. Cf. Hughes, Loyola, 19. 



126 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

cle, into an austere, an invincible, an indispensable soldier 
of a military Church, and by him, twenty years after 
Luther separated from Eome, the Society of Jesus had 
been founded.^ This is not the place to follow the history 
of this extraordinary body of religious soldiers who, with 
numbers never exceeding twenty-five thousand, "-^ held for 
so many years the stronghold of the Church, dictated Euro- 
pean policy, moulded kingdoms, conquered nations, and 
controlled the Holy See itself.^ Such devotion, such sin- 
gleness of aim, such absolute obedience, such supple diplo- 
macy, have seldom been combined in the history of mankind. 
Nothing short of a power mightier than all these forces 
together — the spirit of freedom — was able to destroy the 
dominion of the Society of Jesus. 

I do not presume to analyze the complex problem of the 
growth of the Jesuits, of the means they used to secure and 
keep their ascendency in Europe,* but, so far as I under- 
stand them, it seems to me that their astonishing success 
arose chiefly from their grasp of the fact, earlier than 

1 By the bull of Paul III., Begimini militantis Ecdesice, dated 
Sept. 27, 1540. 

2 "In 1749, when the Society seemed, externally, at the height of 
its prosperity, it counted, in thirty-nine 'provinces,' 22,589 members." 
— HuBER, Jes. Orden, K. V. 217. 

3 In addition to the usual three vows (poverty, chastity, and obedi- 
ence), the Jesuits take a fourth vow of absolute devotion to the See of 
Rome. From this has arisen their power in the Church. 

4 It is difficult, in dealing with the Order of Jesus, to keep a middle 
course between the absurd panegyrics of its own writers and the 
equally absurd denunciations of its opponents. While finding it 
impossible to rid myself of prepossession towards the anti-Jesuit 
writers, I have given no credence to the violent statements of those 
authors who avail themselves of the libellous Monita secreta — an 
obvious literary forgery — to build up, by hyperbole and insinuation, 
a monstrous indictment against the Jesuits. 



THE JANSENISTS AND FENELON. 127 

others, that systematic education can fashion men into 
almost any mental or moral shape. Not only did Loyola 
see that, to create a zealous and aggressive organization, he 
must make his Order a camp under military law, but he 
understood that, to prolong the spirit of zeal — Avhich, in 
the face of immediate danger to the Church, it had been 
easy to arouse — the habit of obedience, the spirit of self- 
interest, the belief in the reality and the necessity of the 
Jesuit idea, must be instilled into and made an integral 
part of the plastic mind of youth. Devotion to the Church, 
he saw, must be made, by a definite and organized plan, the 
goal of education.^ It must be made a habit, a very breath 
of life, hostile to the poisonous influence of schism, to the 
prevalent s^^irit of historical and scientific research, to the 
Zeitgeist of intellectual questioning. 

But he was astute enough to perceive that the day for 
slavish devotion had gone by, to realize that enthusiasm 
for the Order of Jesus must come from a sense of power, 
that its solidarity must be the joyful cohesion of advancing 
conquerors. He fostered, therefore, a consciousness of 
strength, but took care that this feeling should rest upon 
a far different basis within the Order than without. His 
clergy, he determined, should be made truly learned, ^ that 
they might have the firm sense of power which knoAvledge 
alone can give. The education of the laity, on the contrary, 

1 The fourth part of the Constitutiones and the Batio Studiorum 
are saturated with this spirit of devotion. Every tiling must he done 
" Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam " ; that is, to the glory of God as interpreted 
by the Order of Jesus. Literature is to be expurgated, philosophy is 
to be restricted, theology is to be limited, so that nothing inimical to 
the tenets of the Order shall be brought to the attention of impression- 
able youth. 

■■2 To this end they are allowed to mingle in secular affairs, to read 
heretical writings, and, in general, to lead a freer life than is permitted 
to other religious. 



128 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

was to be made elaborately superficial, in order to give them 
that vanity of learning which is the best safeguard against 
real thought and progressive study. By inflating the secu- 
lar mind with vapors of false attainment, he not only 
stifled dangerous speculations, but he created a medium 
favorable to the influence of the astute minds of the clergy. 
Perhaps this is not, baldly, the conscious goal of the Jes- 
uits, but their instructions concerning education have, I am 
convinced, this general tendency. 

It is maintained ^ that the Order of Jesus is indifferent 
and, indeed, hostile towards popular education — ■ that to 
this spirit is due its restriction of teaching to the secondary 
schools and universities. While it is evident that its 
policy would be easier of maintenance among an ignorant 
people, still I cannot but find, perhaps unjustly, a deeper 
reason for its neglect of primary instruction. It appears to 
me that, with characteristic keenness, Loyola secured his 
ends without instilling the spirit of his Order into children ; 
he perceived it to be better to take youth at the impres- 
sionable period of early adolescence in order either to fill 
it with the half-mystic, half -military spirit of Jesuitism, 
or to puff it up with a vapor of sham learning. He wasted 
little energy, therefore, upon primary instruction; but bore 

1 For example, by Compayre : "A permanent and characteristic 
feature of the educational policy of the Jesuits is, that, during the whole 
course of their history, they have deliberately neglected and disdained 
primary instruction. The earth is covered with their Latin colleges ; 
and wherever they have been able, they have put their hands on the 
institutions for university education ; but in no instance have they 
founded a primary school. . . . The truth is that the Jesuits neither 
desire nor love the instruction of the people. . . . The ignorance of a 
people is the best safeguard of its faith, and faith is the supreme end." 
— Hist, of Fed., U2. Cf. Doct. de Ved. en France, I. 170 et seq. See, 
in this connection, the Order of Aquaviva, Feb. 22, 1592, " De noti 
admittendis pueris ad Scholas'"; Pachtler, Fat. Stu., I. 311. 



THE JANSENISTS AND FENELON. 129 

with the whole force of his teaching-machinery upon the 
transition period of growth, upon that critical time when 
the grasp of instinct is loosening, and that of reason is as 
yet weak. By this concentration of energy the Order 
accomplished tasks which, in a broader field of teaching, 
might have been impossible. 

I have spoken of Loyola's plan as though it were the sum 
of the Jesuit education. He was, indeed, the author and 
promoter of their system of teaching; but for more than 
fifty years, the wisest and subtlest minds of the Society 
discussed, tested, and compared its details, adding to it, 
modifying it, and strengthening it, as occasion taught them,^ 
until, under Aquaviva, the fifth general of the Order, it 
took final shape in the Ratio Studioruyn, which is, to-day, 
substantially the rule and practice of the Jesuit teaching.'^ 

1 The fourth part of the Constitutio7ies, that relating to education, 
was begun in 1540. The first draft of the Batio Studiorum was 
pubHshed in 1584, but it was not until 1599, after criticism, discussion, 
and trial throughout the "Provinces" of the Order, that it was for- 
mally promulgated. As the Batio is verbose and is, in the main, 
simply an amplification of Part 4 of the Constitution, I have, in gen- 
eral, referred to the latter authority, using the edition of Pachtler. 

2 " That all the modifications have not altered the essentials of the 
Batio appears from the letter which the general of the Order, P. Beckx, 
addressed in 1854 to the Austrian Minister of Worship, wherein he 
designated the Batio as the rule (norm) to whose unalterable princi- 
ples the Order holds fast and must hold fast, and which can be 
amended only in detail to meet the exigencies of the times. He spe- 
cifically declares that the chief end of the Humanistic education is 
the formal culture of the mind, and opposes the unwarranted exten- 
sion of science-teaching into the gymnasia. 'The gymnasium must 
remain what it is proper for it to be, a gymnastics of the mind, con- 
sisting, not so much in material as in formal culture, not at all in the 
gathering together of multitudinous, heterogeneous knowledge, but in 
the right, natural, and gradual unfolding and improvement of mental 
power.' " — HuBER, Jes. Ord., K. VII. 373. Cf. letter of Father Root- 



130 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

The foundation of the Jesuit system of education rests, 
without question, upon the development of the individual so 
far as he is related to the Society, the entire suppression 
of the individual so far as concerns himself. The child, 
in their scheme, is not to be brought to his own perfection, 
but is to be moulded into a symmetrical and unchangeable 
pillar of the Jesuit Order. He is to become, not a human 
temple, but an infinitesimal fraction of the Church Jesuiti- 
cal. Eelentless is the military axiom that the discipline 
of the army must rest upon the absolute effacement of the 
individual. Seeking this military perfection, the Jesuits 
studied the child, perhaps as he had never before been ana- 
lyzed, but they utilized their knowledge of him, not to 
raise him to his highest independent development, but 
simply to employ his strength — and his weakness, too — 
in the service of their Order. ^ 

Not content, however, with self -perpetuation by the edu- 
cation of their own priests, the Jesuits strove, with won- 
derful success, to gain control of all instruction.^ Using a 
rigorous spirit of selection in the choice of its own mem- 
bers, the Society laid a guiding hand upon all secular edu- 
cation and created for the Church, thereby, a great militia, 
with rank and tile so thoroughly drilled in the Jesuitical 
tactics, with soldiers so bent to the Jesuit will, that they 

haan on the revision of the Batio in 1832 ; Pachtler, Bat. Stu., II. 
228 (translated in Hughes, Loyola, 289 et seq.). 

1 " What gave the teaching of the Jesuits all its power was absolute 
obedience, which they strove to obtain through a sort of voluntary- 
self-effacement on the part of their pupils. The latter lived in an 
atmosphere of minute and untiring surveillance. . . . The supreme 
art of the Jesuits was in making their captives love their prison." — 
DouARCHE, Z(' U7iiv. de Paris et les Jes., 159. 

2 "In 1710, the Jesuits directed the theological and philosophical 
teaching in more than eighty universities." — Huber, Jes. Ord., K. 
V. 217. 



THE JANSENISTS AND FENELON. 131 

could be depended upon to fight blindly, and therefore pas- 
sionately, upon the side of the Catholic Church. 

This being granted, it is easy to scq why their educa- 
tional process is what we find it to be, — mere acquisition, 
real on the part of the Jesuits themselves, false on the 
part of the laity whom they control. Their course of study 
for those outside the priesthood is little more than the 
scholastic training,^ stripped of its sombre garment of con- 
troversy, and wrapped in a graceful cloak of elegant dis- 
putation, a gauzy mantle of grammatical trifling. The 
barbarity of the Schoolmen, dreary as were their meta- 
physical disputes, is preferable to this shallow elegance, in 
which the soul of learning is bartered for empty and mel- 
lifluous words, in which the spirit is killed by the very 
perfection of the letter. 

Their linguistic training had none of the vigor and earn- 
estness which made the study of the ancients, in itself not 
very fruitful, a living impulse towards the Eenaissance. 
Their pupils read extensively in the Greek and Latin 
authors, covering the entire field of philosophy, rhetoric, 
history, and poetry; they disputed concerning them, imi- 
tated them, aspired towards their perfection; but always it 
is a question of form, never of substance.^ In expurgating 

1 Const. S. J., IV. 14. "In Logica et Philosopliia Natural! et 
Morali et Metaphysica doctrina Aristotelis sequenda est ; et in aliis 
Artibus liberalibus et in commentariis tarn liujusmodi auctorum quam 
Humaniorum Litterarum, habito eorum delectu, nominentur ii, quos 
videre discipuli, quosque ipsi Prseceptores prse aliis in doctrina, quam 
tradunt, sequi debeant. Rector autem in omnibus, quae statuerit, 
procedet juxta id, quod in universali Societate magis con venire ad Dei 
gloriam judicabitur." — Pachtler, I. 58. 

See, also, Becret. XXXVI., Congr. gen. XVI. 1 (Pachtler, 1. 104) ; 
and Bat. Stu., Reg. Prof. Phil., § 20 (p. 80). 

2 "Originality and independence of mind, love of truth for its own 
sake, the power of reflecting and of forming correct judgments, were 



132 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

the classics, the Jesuit teachers were right; in extracting 
and epitomizing them to the point of desiccation, they were, 
it seems to me, wholly wrong. And this error came from 
no excess of zeal; it arose, rather, from a fear that if the 
pagan authors were given in unmutilated form, the pupils 
would suspect that wisdom and virtue had been born earlier 
than the foundation of the Catholic Church. To make the 
pagan authors heralds and pro^^hets of Christianity was, 
avowedly, the aim of the Jesuit leaders.^ To do this, it 
was necessary to take them to pieces and to suitably re- 
arrange the fragments before this perverted image could 
have its desired effect upon the pupils. 

Their philosophical and theological teaching, too, was 
given at second-hand. Even Aristotle, too strong intellect- 
ual meat for these moral sucklings, must be diluted through 
Jesuit commentators ; while, in theology, the Vulgate and 
St. Thomas must serve as screens to the Sacred Books. ^ 

Finally, their system rests upon a distrust, almost a 
horror, of reasoning and research.^ Theirs is not an edu- 

not merely neglected — they were suppressed, in the Jesuits' system." 
— Quick, Ed. Reform., 51. See, also, P. Beckx, quot. p. 129. 

1 " Tliese authors must be interpreted in such manner that, although 
profane, they all may become the heralds of Christ." — Joutency, 
Magistris scholarum inferiorum S. J. de ratio ne discendi et docendi. 
(Paris, 1711), 176. (Quot. by Compayre, Doct. de Ved., I. 189.) 

2 Cf. Batio, 43 and 48 ; Begulce Prof, sacrce Scriptune and Beg- 
ulae, Prof. Scholasticce Theologice. 

3 " In iis etiam, in quibus nullum fidei pietatisque periculum subest, 
nemo in rebus alicujus momenti novas introducat qusestiones ; nee 
opinionem ullam, quae idonei nullius auctoris sit, iis, qute prsesunt, 
inconsultis ; nee aliquid contra Doctorum axiomata communemque 
scholarum sensum doceat : sequantur potius universi probatos maxime 
Doctores et quae, prout temporum usus tulerit, recepta potissimum 
fuerint in Catholicis Academiis." — Batio {Beg. Prof. sup. fac), 38. 

See, also, Ordinances of P. Oliva (1687) and P. Tamburini (1706) 



THE JANSENISTS AND F^NELON. 133 

cation of to-day for to-morrow; it is one of yesterday con- 
cerning subjects and modes of thought long dead and cast 
aside. 

On the other hand, the Jesuit teaching was the first me- 
thodical instruction which had been organized on a great 
scale. Having a definite, though bad, object in view, it 
kept strictly to the path leading to that end. It never 
wandered or wasted time, but marched to its futile goal in 
military order, without hesitation or shadow of wavering. 
It must have been this orderliness and sureness of aim 
which attracted Bacon and drew from him praise that he 
could nowhere so unfittingly have bestowed. In so far, 
their system of education was superlatively good and, very 
rightly, served as a model for all time. Since their advent 
teachers have wandered and stumbled, and, indeed, still grope 
and clutch, but never since the supremacy of the Jesuit 
education have there been absent from the minds of the 
trainers of children some conscious aim — false or true — 
and some method — foolish or wise — of fulfilling that aim. 
Comenius, whose chief pedagogic merit, as we have seen, 
lay in his insistence upon method, undoubtedly drew all 
his inspiration, in this particular, from the Batio Studio- 
rum. The wide difference in result came from the differ- 
ent spirit of its application. 

A certain good principle existed, too, in the Jesuit 
system of lay punishment.^ By it the priestly teacher was 

against the teachings of Descartes and Leibnitz. (Pachtler, Bat. 
Stic, III. 121 and 122.) 

1 " Propter eos, qui tam in diligentia suis studiis adhibenda quam in 
iis, quae ad bonos mores pertinent, peccaverint, et cum quibus sola 
verba bona et exhortationes non sufficiunt, Corrector, qui de Societate 
non sit, constituatur, qui pueros in timore contineat et eos, quibus id 
opus erit, quique castigationis hujusmodi erunt capaces, castiget." 
— Const. S. J., IV. 16. 



134 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

kept above the horrid details of the rod, which, even with 
them, was the accepted medicine for human depravity in 
those cases where persuasion and argument had failed. 

In questions of health the Jesuits were wise and careful. 
They required early and regular hours of going to bed, a 
full and nourishing diet, short hours of study, ^ and much 
exercise and play in the open air. An excellent spirit of 
gayety and comradeship pervaded their teaching. The 
priests took part in boyish games, encouraged health- 
ful and innocent amusements, and initiated those elabo- 
rate theatrical performances which, in their day, were 
famous. 

On the whole, then, the instruction given by the Jesuits 
was, in itself, not bad. It was superficial, frivolous, and 
conduced to the making of "great boys, not men"; but it 
was methodical, cheerful, and painstaking. The education 
given by the Jesuits was, on the other hand, wholly bad; 
first, as I have shown, because it totally suppressed the in- 
dividual, robbing the child of his birthright of character; 
secondly, because it used bad pedagogic tools — prizes, 
decorations, and elaborate rewards,^ and bad methods of 
moral pressure — spying and tale-bearing;^ and, thirdly, 
because the spirit of the Jesuits, a spirit which by no pos- 
sibility could have failed to permeate their teaching and 

1 "Id tatem pecuUari cura animadvertum erit, ut temporibus vale- 
tudini corporis incommodis Scholastici non stiideant ; ut somno, quan- 
tum temporis satis sit, tribuant ; et in laboribus mentis modum servent." 
— Const. S. J., IV. 4. 

2 See Bat. 8tu., "Regul^ communes Professoribus classium infe- 
riorum." (P. 114 of the ed. of 1635.) 

3 "A pupil could rid himself of certain punishments by denouncing 
another, and every papil had to have a rival to watch and denounce 
him. Moreover, the plan of studies makes denunciation a duty, and 
every pupil is constituted, by this duty, a spy upon his fellows." — 
Paroz, Hist. univ. de la Fed., 136. 



THE JANSENISTS AND FENELON. 135 

debauch their pupils, was wickedly casuistic.^ Combat as 
they may the minor errors of the Provincial Letters, the 
testimony which Pascal there brought against them is 
too strong to be disproved. Their doctrines of " probabil- 
ity," of "intention," of the "justification of the means by 
the end," may have been necessary to carry out in their 
way the conquest upon which they had entered; they may 
honestly have believed that the salvation of mankind de- 
pended upon the success of their efforts ; ^ the results, from 
their point of view, may have sanctified the doctrines ; but 
the holders of such beliefs are not fit for the bringing up of 
youth; a body of men, however earnest, which advances 
by such arts mast miserably fail in education, no matter 
how brilliant may be its teachers, or how apparently suc- 
cessful may be its schools. Whether or not it explicitly 
taught these doctrines, so long as it maintained them the 
Order was immoral, the education which it gave was sure 
to be bad, the pupils whom it taught were bound to be 
perverted. 

It was against this cardinal immorality, and against its 

1 See the Provincial Letters, especially the fourth and fifth. Against 
the Jesuit contention that their evil casuistry, if it ever existed, is a 
thing of the past, we have the testimony, among others, of Cartwright 
{Jesuits, Part II. 145 et seq.), and of Bert (La morale des Jes.) who 
quote from modern Jesuit writers of standing and popularity, and show 
that immoral casuistry still forms a part of the Order's pedagogy. The 
whole question is one of evidence, and, to me, the weight of it is against 
the Jesuits. 

2 " Their object is not to corrupt manners ; that is by no means their 
design. But neither is their sole object the reforming of them ; that 
would be impolitic. This is their aim : they have so good an opinion 
of themselves as to believe that it is desirable and, indeed, essential to 
the good of religion that their influence shall be extended everywhere, 
and that they shall control all consciences. . . . Having to deal with 
persons of every condition and nationality, they must have casuists to 
suit the diversity." — Pascal, Prov. Let., V. 87. 



136 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

propagation as Christianity, that, it seems to me, the Jan- 
senist movement arose in protest. Ostensibly, the battle 
between the Jesuits and the Jansenists was fought over 
issues centring around the famous Five Propositions con- 
cerning Divine Grace.^ None but the subtlest of theolo- 
gians could presume to argue upon these propositions ; and, 
had they been the real ground of the quarrel, the discus- 
sion, doubtless, would have confined itself to the wrangling 
doctors then so plentiful. But I venture to assert, after as 
full a study as my theological ignorance has permitted, that 
the real difference between these factions of the Church lay 
much deeper than the interpretation of these Eive Propo- 
sitions and the occult distinctions between fait and droits 
There were present, of course, the political forces which 
entered into all theological controversies, but, greater than 

1 Beard {Port Boyal, I. 247) records the Five Propositions "in all 
their original obscurity" as follows : — 

" I. Some commandments of God are impossible of performance to 
just men, according to their present strength, even though they be 
willing and striving to perform them ; and the grace which would make 
these commandments possible is also wanting to them. 

"II. In the state of fallen nature, no resistance is ever made to 
internal grace. 

"III. In order to produce merit or demerit in the state of fallen 
nature, liberty from necessity is not required in man, but liberty from 
constraint is sufficient. 

"IV. The Semi-Pelagians admitted the need of prevenient internal 
grace for all actions, even for the beginning of faith ; and they were 
heretics, inasmuch as they would have this grace to be such as the will 
of man could either resist or obey. 

"V. It is a Semi-Pelagian error to say that Christ died or shed his 
blood for all men, universally." 

Cf. Ste. Beuve's treatment of the Propositions (Port-Boy., II. 103). 

2 See Pascal, Prov. Let., XVII. and XVIII. The famous distinction 
was first made by Antoine Arnauld in his Second Letter to a Duke and 
Peer, published in 1655. See Beard, Port Boy., I. 254. 



THE JANSENISTS AND FENELON. 137 

these, were the moral forces that permitted of no other 
outcome than the martyrdom, if we choose to call it so, of 
the Port Royalists. To the lay mind their doctrine of 
grace was essentially that of Calvin,^ and I cannot but think 
that, upon the common ground of moral responsibility, the 
two beliefs were identical; therefore, the Jansenist move- 
ment was, to all intents and purposes, a protest against 
the essential immorality of the Jesuits, just as the Lutheran 
movement was a protest against the real immorality of the 
Papacy. Their theology was Calvinistic, but their spirit 
was fundamentally Lutheran. 

The Jansenist uprising may be said to have produced a 
fivefold result — first, in the tremendous theological contro- 
versy relative to the efficacy of Grace, the echoes of which 
still linger; secondly, in the revival of asceticism and the 
birth, within the Church of Eome, of that hyper-conscien- 
tiousness which Calvin had engendered in the Protestant 
fold ; thirdly, in the advent of woman as a power in spirit- 
ual leadership; fourthly, in a revolution in literary style, 
based upon the ascetic simplicity of Port Royal and per- 
fected in the Provincial Letters of Pascal; fifthly, in a 
reform in the spirit of Catholic teaching, to bring it into 
harmony with the world-force acting without the Church. 

1 Gibbon, although scarcely a competent witness, says, cleverly {De- 
dine and Fall, etc., III. 215): "The Church of Rome has canonized 
Augustine and reprobated Calvin. Yet as the real difference between 
them is invisible even to a theological microscope, the Molinists are 
oppressed by the authority of the saint, and the Jansenists are dis- 
graced by their resemblance to the heretic. ' ' In the valuable discussion 
of the controversies regarding predestination and grace in Le Clerc's 
Bibliotheque Uiiiverselle (T. XIV. 157) we read: "In regard to free- 
will and the efficacy of grace, the principal difference existing between 
them" (the disciples of St. Augustine) " and the Protestants, consists 
in the fact that the Augustinians, imitating their master, pick their 
phrases much better than Luther and Calvin." 



138 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

With the literary revolution that sprang from Port Royal 
we need not concern ourselves ; with the labyrinthine theo- 
logical discussion and the swarm of books and pamphlets 
which it evoked I am not competent to deal, even were 
the study productive of anything except utter bewilder- 
ment.^ It is in the new role given to women by this 
heresy, and in its reform of education, that we are inter- 
ested. 

The greatest leader in this struggle, not for a new faith, 
but for a purer, simpler faith, and a direct, unflinching 
standard of morality, was the Abbot of St. Cyran.'^ He 
and his close friend, Jansen, Bishop of "fpres,^ resting their 
faith upon the teaching of St. Augustine, from which the 
Church had drifted into Semi-Pelagianism,^ steeped them- 
selves in his writings, and, after a lifetime of study, Jansen 
wrote a Calvinistic exposition of him, called the Augusti- 
nus. Meanwhile M. de St. Cyran had found, in the Abbey 
of Port Royal, which was under his spiritual charge, a mar- 
vellous woman, "Mere Angelique " Arnauld. Under his 
guidance she brought to an even higher standard of devo- 
tion this abbey, which, coming to it as a young girl, she 
had already transformed from a lounging-place of court 
ladies into a real house of prayer and good works. Pur- 
thermore, by sheer force of her extraordinary will, she 
gathered about her the larger part of her family, its men, 

1 To gain an idea of the literature of the controversy, see the list of 
more than three hundred writers, most of them voluminous, given in 
the Diet, des Jansenistes. 

2 Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, born at Bayonne in 1581, died, after 
five years' imprisonment, in 1643. 

3 Cornelis, "son of Jan," was born, of peasants, in Holland in 
1585. His Augustinus was not published until after his death (of the 
plague), in 1638. 

4 For the "- sentiments ^^ of the Semi-Pelagians, see the Bihlio- 
theque Universelle of Le Clerc, VIII. 221. 



THE JANSENISTS AND FENELON. 139 

under the leadership of Antoine Arnauld, establishing a 
monastery upon the fervent and ascetic rule which she 
had instituted at Port Koyal. When we remember that 
this family of Arnauld was one of the great intellectual 
families of France,^ that its members who forsook the world 
at the instigation of this masterful woman were its greatest 
figures, and that those whom they gathered about them were 
lights of the French court only less shining, we can under- 
stand how stern was the rebuke given by their simple and 
God-fearing lives, and how instinctive was the dread of them 
which arose among the Jesuits, arch-casuists as they were, 
and open supporters of the prevailing standards of moral- 
ity. Richelieu, too, had his private grudge against Jan- 
sen,^ and was only too glad to further the charge of heresy 
brought by the Order of Jesus against the Augustinus. 
M. de St. Cyran, of course, supported the orthodoxy of 
the treatise, and his devoted spiritual flock at Port Eoyal 
sustained him. The Abbot was imprisoned, and the Port 
Eoyalists were subjected to intermittent persecution. 
When this persecution was at its height, and the Five 
Propositions were under examination and probable condem- 
nation by the Holy See, there arose a new champion for 
Port Eoyal, one who brought the controversy out of the 
cloister and the antechamber of the court into the light of 
popular interest and enthusiasm. When the cause seemed 
most hopeless, Pascal published the Provincial Letters,^ 
and inaugurated, not only a new era in the Catholic Church, 
but an epoch in literature. 

1 For the Arnaulds, see Ste. Beuve, Port- Roy., Liv. I. ; and Book I. 
of Beard's Port Boyal ; also, Tollemache, French Jansenists. 

% On account of his Mars Gallica, a violent attack on the Cardinal's 
policy. 

3 See the over-dramatic account of their origin in Ricard, Prem. 
Jan. et Port-Boy., 366 et seq. 



140 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

Blaise Pascal and his sister Jacqueline ^ are among the 
extraordinary figures of history. He, a marked scientific 
genius, she, one of the most poetic of natures, both threw 
themselves into the Jansenist controversy with the zeal and 
consuming self-sacrifice of the martyred saints. Both died 
at an early age, destroyed by the flames of their own 
ardor, but not until they had changed the whole face of the 
controversy in which their part was so conspicuous. Around 
them and the Arnaulds the supreme interest of Jansenism 
centres; but hundreds of other minds, the most brilliant in 
France, fill the scene of Port Royal, and make the study of 
this heresy, wholly apart from its theological side, one of 
the most fascinating of the world's smaller dramas. Un- 
fortunately, we cannot pursue it. In spite of the brilliancy 
of the Port Eoyal group, in spite of the power and popu- 
larity of the Arnaulds, in spite of the sacrifice of the two 
Pascals, the Jansenist uprising was quelled, and its adhe- 
rents were driven into the Netherlands. The Jesuits out- 
wardly triumphed, and had still before them their most 
prosperous years ; nevertheless, a handful of exiles, to most 
men merely a name, to many men a byword and a hissing, 
the Port Royalists had really won the victory. A mortal 
blow had been given to the Order of Jesus by the fourth 
Provincial Letter. 

A recent Jesuit writer ^ points with some complacency 
to the fact that the men of the Reign of Terror were the 
first generation for two hundred years that had been denied 
the privilege of a Jesuit education. Rather ought he and 
his to hide their heads in shame that two hundred years of 

1 See Cousin's brilliant monograph regarding her. 

2 Hughes, Loyola, 20. Cf. Cretineau-Joly (T. IV., Ch. III. 210). 
" It was not while they" (the Jesuits) "occupied the College Louis- 
le-Grand that the Robespierres, the Camille Desmoulins, Frerons, 
Talliens, Cheniers, and so many such, attended." 



THE JANSENISTS AND FENELON. 141 

Jesuitical control could not end otherwise than in the Reign 
of Terror. We are accustomed to say that Eousseau lighted 
the torch of the French Revolution; perhaps we ought 
rather to assert that it was kindled, more than a hundred 
years earlier, by Angelique Arnauld, and the fierce recluses, 
all soul and conscience, who hovered like accusing angels 
over the self-doomed monarchy. 

To interpret the work of the Jansenists in education it 
is essential to understand their attitude towards children. 
Holding the doctrine of foreordination, though in softer 
form than that of wrathful Calvinism, their feeling towards 
their pupils was one of immense and tender yearning. Be- 
lieving salvation ordained for only certain pre-selected 
lambs, they nevertheless besought it, fervently, for all their 
flock, and mournfully prepared each little soul — which 
they shuddered to think destined for eternal wrath — for 
the rare possibility of everlasting bliss. This enfolding, 
womanly tenderness of the men of Port Royal, ^ their in- 
tense sympathy for these innocent victims of Divine ven- 
geance, is one of the great human pictures of history. There 
is something profoundly pathetic in these stern monks, self- 
torn from earthly affairs, self-separated from love and 
domesticity, warming within their hearts their little charges, 
and trying, clumsily, to create a sort of home for them. 
A sad hearth, perhaps, with cruel Divine ii? justice ever 
impending; but, still, a better home than the worldly ones 
from which they came, in that it held human sympathy for 
the children and in that it strove towards their comprehen- 
sion and development. "I would you could read in my 
heart," said M. de St. Cyran,^ "how great is my affection 



^ See the conversation of De Saci reported by Fontaine (Ste. Beuve, 
Port-Boy., III. 416). 

'^ Ste. Beuve, Port-Boy., III. 398. 



142 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

for children." Said one of liis disciples regarding him:^ 
" M. de St. Cyran's love, being catholic and universal like 
his faith, brooded these little lost souls and, since Jesus 
Christ shed his blood for their salvation, he could but 
think himself blessed in giving his life to succoring them." 
This brooding love inspired him with the idea of the 
"Little schools." He did not live to establish them, but 
his followers founded them in harmony with his teachings 
and wholly in his spirit.^ 

This attitude towards children, though sixteen centuries 
old, was a new one to the modern world. Seldom before, 
since Jesus taught it and made it a fundamental part of 
Christianity, had this spirit towards children been exhibited; 
never before had it been shown in a way so marked and so 
impressive. It held the germ of a complete ethical revolu- 
tion. The Protestant leaders in education had possessed 
themselves, in a measure, of this sympathetic quality; 
Comenius especially had understood its power in the training 
of the young; but it remained for these ascetics of Port 
Koyal to show the womanly tenderness, the feminine self- 
projection into the plane of infancy, that are the bases of 
true education. This is the attitude in which we try to 
put ourselves to-day; it is the heart of the Froebelian 
movement; but is it always present in our systems of 
teaching? We have taken children out of the shadow of 
avenging Deity, but, in so doing, have we always secured 
to them the atmosphere of sympathy which is the essential 
moral nourishment of childhood, and of which these stern 
and pessimistic monks were so wisely lavish? There was 
nothing of the sentimental in their treatment of children; 
still less was there a trace of effeminacy in the Jansenists, 

1 M. de Ste. Marthe. Quoted by Ste. Beuve, Port-Roy., III. 412. 

2 See the interesting summary of the principles of their pedagogy 
given by Ricard, Prem. Jan. et Port- Boy., Ch. IV., § 2. 



THE JANSENISTS AND FBNELON. 143 

whose very nuns were virile. But to the men of Port 
Eoyal was given that till then unknown stimulus of femi- 
nine influence necessary to the development of a natural 
plan of education. The " Little schools " were controlled 
by the monks of Port Royal, but the rulers and leaders of 
the moral struggle for which Port Eoyal stood were, it 
is evident, the nuns. France, having been the first to 
give her women intellectual freedom, was also the first to 
give them their rightful place as moral leaders. The influ- 
ence of such women as those of the Hotel de Eambouillet, 
on the intellectual side, had been immense,^ and had carried 
France far ahead of her sister nations. That of the women 
of Port Eoyal was to be greater still, for it was to bring 
about the moral regeneration of Europe. Such forces as 
this of Jansenism are, humanly speaking, slow. The Jes- 
uits, with their false morality, were to have nominal power 
for still another century; Pompadour and Du Barri were 
yet to sully the throne of France ; and the philosophes were 
to possess, for a time, all literature; but after these the 
carmagnole was to be danced; the women of the people 
were to knit on the Place de la Eevolution ; the Year One 
was to be proclaimed; and out of this horrid travail were 
to be born the free man, the free woman, and the free child. 
From womanly sympathy with and feminine compre- 
hension of the child sprang the Jansenist education. The 
revolt against Jesuitical casuistry was but another form of 
it. Angelique Arnauld hated untruth and scorned subter- 
fuge. She taught her women to hate and scorn them too. 
Fixing on these lines the direction of the Jansenist move- 
ment, she gathered about her, as all great moral souls ever 

1 "... in the elegant salons of the Italian Hotel de Rambouillet, 
the national speech took on suppleness and grace, unhappily spoiled 
by affectation ; in the desert of Port Royal, it learned strength and 
masculine energy." — Ricard, Pr€7n. Jan. et Port-Boij., 30i. 



144 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

have done and ever will do, the scattered forces of morality, 
and inspired the abbesses who succeeded her to stand out 
against the Jesuits. With four loyal bishops/ a handful 
of monks, and a still smaller group of nuns, Port E-oyal 
did battle with Mazarin, with France, with Rome itself, 
— and won. 

The schools of the Jansenists, modestly — perhaps not 
ingenuously — called "Little schools," existed less than 
twenty years, and during much of that time led a precari- 
ous life. Held sometimes at Port-Royal-in-the-Fields, 
sometimes in private houses, during a few years of compara- 
tive prosperity in Paris, they were feeble things, and in 
them were trained, altogether, a mere few hundred chil- 
dren. They seem indeed " little " beside the prosperous, 
well-ordered institutions of the Jesuits, crowded with the 
French noblesse. But their spirit, as we shall see, soon 
dominated France, their text-books became models even for 
their enemies, and their spirit — slowly but absolutely — 
changed the course of education. 

It is for this spirit that we owe our chief debt to the 
Jansenists. Their methods of teaching and their text-books 
were simply its embodiment. Their war against the Jes- 
uits, in which that body received its death-wound, was but 
an irresistible impulse from it. Their martyrdom in de- 
fence of the Five Propositions, which, so far as the nuns 
were concerned, were vain theological quibbles, was a part 
of the same steadfastness in the cause of truth. In their 
relations with children this spirit took the form of absolute 
sincerity, scrupulous fidelity, a single eye to the child's 
own best development, the cultivation of everything good 
in him and the suppression of everything evil, and a con- 
stant tender watchfulness over him. Add to these the 

1 See Beard, Port Boy., II. 189 et seq. 



THE JANSENISTS AND FENELON. 145 

sympathy that was inspired by their doctrine of Divine 
grace, and we have the explanation of the immense power 
of the Jansenist influence in education.^ 

The Jesuits had in view little more than grace, polish, 
and a vain, superficial learning; the Jansenists aimed at 
solidity, thoroughness, and the humility of real knowledge. 
The Jesuits studied language in order to attain elegance, 
the Jansenists in order to give full meaning to the truth. 
The Jesuits studied the classic authors from the outside, 
weaving over them an arabesque of grammatical cobweb; 
the Jansenists studied them through and through, reverenc- 
ing their beauty of thought more than their finish of form. 
The Jesuits clung to the scholastic torture of making, even 
with infants, the study of Latin the beginning of all learn- 
ing; the Jansenists built up their teaching upon the mother- 
tongue,^ thereby not only smoothing the stony road to 
learning, but redeeming the beautiful French speech from 
its disgraceful bondage. The Jesuit teaching was bookish, 
pedantic, and syntactical ; the Jansenist was conversational, 
natural, and free from many of the barbarities of scholasti- 
cism. Finally, strange as it may appear, the Jansenists 
accepted the enlightened opinions of Descartes, which the 
Jesuits rejected, based their teaching in matters of science 
and philosophy upon his, and gave thereby a strong impulse 
to the progress, within the Church, of Baconian principles. 

We may say, too, that with the Port Eoyalists began the 
evolution of the text-book as a tool of teaching. Books 
for pupils had not been wanting, and the scholastics had 
heaped volume upon volume into mountains of well-nigh 
worthless learning. The Jesuits, also, had prepared many 
books adapted to their ways and ends of teaching. But 

1 See Ste. Beuve, Port-Boy., Liv. 4^6. ; and Beard, Port Boy., II. 132 
et seq. 

^ Cf . Ricard, Prem. Jan., Ch. IV., § 5. 



146 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

neither the ponderous works of the Schoolmen nor the 
warped puerilities of the Society of Jesus were real text- 
books, — they were not, that is, perfect and articulate skel- 
etons for the teacher to flesh-clothe. It remained for 
Messieurs de Port-Royal to produce true text-books; not 
flawless ones, indeed, but soundly planned, and built upon 
such lines that growth and expansion could safely rest upon 
them for many years to come. 

Three names are conspicuous in connection with the text- 
books of Port Koyal, — Antoine Arnauld, to whom the 
Geometry as well as the plan, and a large share of the exe- 
cution, of the Logic are due; Lancelot, most modest of 
self-effacing Jansenists, who wrote the grammars and, with 
Arnauld, the general treatise on grammatical science ; and 
Nicole, not of the inner brotherhood of Port Royal, but one 
of the hardest and most fertile workers in their cause. We 
cannot examine the writings of these men; indeed, the 
study of dead text-books is a melancholy quest ; enough 
to know that they are based upon Port Royal principles. 
The authors use the mother-tongue as the vehicle of study 
— Greek, for example, being divorced from Latin ; they 
avail themselves largely of viva voce methods, and lan- 
guages are taught, to a remarkable degree, through conver- 
sation. The child is treated as a rational and dignified 
being, and as one having a definite law of development, 
worthy of consideration. In short, the spirit of these 
writings is broad, honest, earnest, far-seeing, and Cartesian.^ 

Says Paroz, in his Histoire Universelle de la Pedagogie : ^ 
"If Prance had carried forward the educational work begun 
by Port Royal, she would be almost two centuries farther 
forward. The whole of the eighteenth and the first third 
of the nineteenth centuries were chained to barren theories 

iSee Beard, Port Boy., II. 2 153. 



THE JANSENISTS AND FENELON. 147 

in philosophy and economics; it is only within a very few 
years that good educational books have again begun to 
appear in France, taking up the thread where Louis XIV. 
broke it." A generalization true in so far as it is not con- 
tradicted, as all broad statements must be, by specific 
exceptions. 

Thus the two tendencies — that of the Jesuits towards 
evil, that of the Jansenists towards good — wrestled 
within the Church and the latter, in its very defeat, over- 
threw the former. But aloof from this contest, however 
they may have been affected indirectly, stood the mass of 
Koman Catholics, sympathizing as little with the casuistry 
of Jesuitism as with the heresy of Jansenism. This major- 
ity could be affected only by an impulse from the court. 
Although a priest-ridden age, that of Louis XIV. until 
Madame de Maintenon's ascendency, was far from being a 
fanatical one ; and the king was little disposed to continue 
that regency of the Church which, previous to his majority, 
had been the normal condition in France. His death, how- 
ever, would probably restore ecclesiastical dominion. Im- 
mense significance attached, therefore, to the choice of tutor 
for his son the Dauphin and his grandson, the Duke of 
Burgundy, called the "Little Dauphin." For the former 
duty was selected Bossuet, the awful Bossuet, whose ora- 
tions we admire and never read; for the latter was chosen, 
in due time, Fenelon.^ Around these two men gathered 
court factions, for upon one or both of them, if the old 
order returned, would rest the government of France when- 
ever death should remove the Grand Monarque. But death 
delayed in cutting short so unique a career, and both the 
Dauphin and his son died before their ancestor, leaving 

1 Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fenelon was born at the 
Chateau de F^nelon (P^rigord), Aug. 6, 1651, and died at Cambrai 
(virtually in exile), Jan. 7, 1715. 



148 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

poor France not only at the mercy of a regency, but in the 
hands of men far different from either the honest, though 
autocratic, Bossuet or the mild and saintly Fenelon. 

Long before the " Little Daui^hin's " death, however, Fen- 
elon had brought himself into conflict with his old master, 
Bossuet, and with the court, by his unwise zeal in support- 
ing the notorious Madame Guyon and her doctrines of 
modified Quietism. ^ What may have been Fenelon's 
real position in this affair, what political intrigue may have 
been brought against him, we need not inquire ; sufficient 
that his connection with this schismatic transcendentalism 
banished him from court to the safe seclusion of his Arch- 
bishopric of Cambrai and separated him from his beloved 
royal pupil. His educational work was done, however; 
overdone, I fear, since he had not only curbed the head- 
strong and passionate nature of the boy, but had trans- 
formed him into a morbid zealot kept only by royal pressure 
outside the cloister. ^ But this result came rather from the 
intensity than from the ill-direction of his training. The 
tutor's ambition had overleapt itself, but its leap was 
rightly aimed. There must have been power in the method 

1 Madame Guyon's doctrines are set forth, principally, in the 
Moyen court de faire oraison and in the Explication du Cantique des 
cantiques. It seems to have consisted, mainly, in the attainment of 
a state of passive ecstasy : — 

" L' abandon parfait, qui est le clef de tout I'interieur, n'excepte rien, 
ne reserve rien, ni mort, ni vie, ni perfection, ni salut, ni paradis, ni 
enfer. L'ame ne se sent plus, ne se voit plus, ne se connait plus ; elle 
ne voit rien de Dieu, n'en comprend rien, n'en distingue rien ; iln'y 
a plus d' amour, de lumieres, ni de connoissance." — Livre des Torrents 
(Quot. by La Bruyere, Dial, sur le Quiet., 612 and 630). For F6ne- 
lon's connection with this heresy, see Brunetiere, JSfouv. etudes crit., II. 
27, and Upham, Madame Guyon and Fenelon. 

2 See La Harpe's Eloge de Fenelon (CEuv. Comp. de Fen., X. 386) ; 
also Saint-Simon. (Quot. by Janet, Fenelon, Ch. III. 41.) 



THE JANSENISTS AND FENELON. 149 

as well as strength in the man to have overcome such a 
nature as that of the "Little Dauphin," — headstrong, 
passionate, self-indulgent, — transforming it into that of a 
pious prig. 

Most persons have read TeUmaque, many the Fables and 
the Dialogues of the Dead. In all these Fenelon's plan is 
clear; it is mainly one of teaching by indirection. It is an 
attempt to instruct, especially upon the ethical side, through 
the use of narrative, and to surprise the pupil with a sort 
of climax of moral truth. All these books, especially the 
Fables, were composed to provide for certain necessities of 
the Prince's training, and they are by no means general 
pedagogic treatises; rather are they models upon which 
every teacher who wishes to follow Fenelon's plan must 
build new fables, new dialogues, and new romances suited 
to his several pupils. To us, in these days of literary sub- 
tility, when the value of the moral is in proportion to its 
obscurity, these teachings of Fenelon seem painfully obvi- 
ous. Too marked indeed, even to Louis, was the lesson 
given by Telemaque ; and, however innocent Fenelon may 
have been of a definite attempt to satirize his reign, the old 
king was undoubtedly glad to seize upon his Quietist 
leanings as an excuse for removing him from the court. 
But the book itself could not be put out of the way so easily. 
Together with the Dialogues and the earlier treatise On the 
Education of Girls, it had a marked effect upon both the 
political and the educational growth of France. Through 
these books, quite as much, perhaps, as through the writ- 
ings and text-books of the Jansenists themselves, did the 
Port Koyal influence make headway. For Fenelon, in his 
spirit, was a thorough Jansenist. Good Catholic and loyal 
subject though he was, he had imbibed, unconsciously 
enough, the atmosphere of the Port Koyal schools, and his 
teaching as well as his books were permeated with it. 



150 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

His method of education is Jansenist in that it regards 
the child as an entity to be fully developed by rational 
methods, and one to be individually studied, so that the 
methods may be adapted to him. It is Jansenist in that 
it is gentle and sympathetic, and is scrupulous in its regard 
for simplicity and truth. Even its indirection, which 
savors of duplicity, and which Rousseau later developed 
into real deceit, is with Fenelon merely the expression of 
the necessity of adapting one's self to the child, of treating 
him with conversational freedom, and of using his ordinary, 
daily life to teach eternal truths. The Fables are kinder- 
garten stories, " writ large " and distinctly labelled with 
their moral. 

"Show them," says Fenelon,^ speaking of the relations 
of the ideal teacher to his pupils, " the utility of the things 
you teach; . . . else study will seem to them abstract, 
barren, and hard. What use is it, they will say to them- 
selves, to learn all these things which no one talks about 
and which have no relation to our actions? . . . One must 
always show them a definite and pleasant end to sustain 
them in their work, never attempting to compel them by 
hard and unreasoning authority." * 

"Never assume," he continues, ^ "except in extremity, an 
air of command, frightening children. . . . You will 
close their hearts and sear their consciences, without which 
education will be fruitless. Make them love you; let them 
be at ease with you, and not afraid to have you see their 
faults. To reassure them, be indulgent to those who wear 
no disguise before you. Appear neither astonished nor 
irritated by their evil propensities; on the contrary, pity 
their weaknesses." And again :^ "Often it is a question 
only of not harassing children, of busying one's self in their 

1 De Ved. desfilUs {(^uv. Comp., VI. 26). ^ j^^-^. 3 n^i^,^ 107. 



THE JANSENISTS AND' FENELON. 151 

vicinity while watching them, inspiring them with trust, 
replying clearly and intelligently to their little questions, 
taking advantage of their natural disposition to acquire, 
correcting them patiently when they make mistakes or do 
wrong." Quotations might easily be multiplied to show the 
liberality and modern spirit of the gentle Archbishop. 

Through Fenelon, then, whose orthodoxy and loyalty, 
until the unhappy affair of Quietism, were unquestioned, 
and who, after his banishment to Cambrai, was bitter, so 
far as bitterness was possible to him, in persecution of the 
Jansenists infesting his see, the influence of Port Royal 
was brought into the fold of the Church and established 
there at the very moment when the cause of Jansenism 
appeared most hopeless, and the triumph of Jesuitism 
seemed forever assured. 

It is a singular spectacle, this of Fenelon, himself vir- 
tually an exile because of his heresies, vigorously pursuing 
other heretics, unjustly banned as he was, and for opinions 
closely akin to his. And more singular still is the figure 
of Madame de Maintenon, self-appointed missionary to His 
Most Christian Majesty, deadliest enemy of Jansenism, and 
of Fenelon, too,^ adopting, in her school at St. Cyr, the 
educational ideas of both, and giving deep and permanent 
root there to those principles of enlightened liberty, the 
fruitage of which all of them — Jansenists, Fenelon, and 
Madame de Maintenon — would have united in condemn- 
ing. Nevertheless, in the commonplace and rather vapid 
course of study at St. Cyr,^ — that school for girls which, 

1 After his connection with Quietism. Before that time he was one 
of her trusted advisers. 

2 There were two distinct phases, during Madame de Maintenon' s 
lifetime, in the very interesting and historically instructive experience 
of St. Cyr. In the first, the school was approximately secular, its 
pupils produced the Esther and Athalie which Racine wrote especially 



152 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

next to his Majesty, received the largest share of Madame 
de Maintenon's attention, — is to be found, it seems to me, 
the germ of the wide educational opportunities now open 
to women. ^ 

The nuns of Port Eoyal, strong as they were, and help- 
ful as was their influence upon the teaching work of the 
monks, had not courage sufficient to make their schools 
for girls anything more than most rigid convent schools ; '^ 
but their zeal and sincerity, shaped by Fenelon in his edu- 
cational work, and trained by Madame de Maintenon in 
her school for girls grew, in time, into the vigorous tree 
of feminine education, whose roots are in the public 
schools, and whose branches are pushing steadily upward 
into the rare ether of the universities. 

for them, and its spirit was that of the lay schools of the Jesuits. In 
the second, through a sudden revulsion of feeling on the part of its 
founder, St. Cyr assumed a conventual aspect, and, while nominally 
more completely under Jesuit control than before, became, in fact, 
more closely akin to the Jansenist schools. 

1 See the very interesting comparison of Fenelon and Madame de 
Maintenon with Rousseau, in Girardin, J.-J. Rousseau, II., Ch. XII. 

2 See Jacqueline Pascal's Beglement pour les enfants, given in 
Faugere, Let. de Jac. Pascal, 228. 



ROUSSEAU. 153 



CHAPTER VII. 

ROUSSEAU. 

The Child has a Soul to be kept Pure. 

HIS influence ; his character ; the "confessions" ; his career; 
HIS writings ; rousseau and LOCKE contrasted ; THE inter- 
dependence OF religion and education ; THE fundamental 

ideas of THE JANSENISTS AND OF ROUSSEAU ; VIGILANCE ; 
" EMILE " ; ITS PRINCIPLES; THEIR ORIGIN; IEMILE's EDUCA- 
TION ; ITS DETAILS ; ITS FALLACIES ; ITS TRUTHS ; ITS INFLUENCE. 

Madame de Stael redeems a commonplace preface to 
her immature Letters on Rousseau by one happy phrase. 
She characterizes Rousseau^ as "Him who has succeeded 
in making a passion of Virtue." With feminine instinct, 
she has seized a subtle fact missed by more learned critics. 
So far as epigram can go, she has probed the mystery 
of this weak man's power. Rousseau taught little that 
was new; he borrowed unblushingly from books that he 
affected to despise ; ^ he was an egotist, often illogical, not 
seldom insincere. How, then, did he and his books sway 
this rigid world so that it still trembles? Here in America 
he inspired the form of our Declaration of Independence 
and the doctrines of our Democratic party. ^ In France his 

1 (Euv. Com})., I. 4. 

2 See, e.g., the denunciations of Cajot, Les plagiats de M" J. J. B. 
de Geneve sur Veduc. 

3 Especially through Du contrat .social Many of Rousseau's ideas 
originated, however, with Locke, upon whose writings Jean-Jacques 
drew freely. 



154 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

absurdest paradoxes were law and gospel to the Jacobins. 
Emile, an unpractical treatise merging into a tiresome 
romance, is the one book on education of which none will 
hesitate to say, " Here begins an era in social development." 
Yet it contains scarcely an idea that is not already in the 
Greek and Latin literatures, in Rabelais, Montaigne, or 
Locke. Whole passages even, if we put faith in his de- 
tractors, are taken bodily from obscurer writings. 

Why, then, is this stream of borrowed thoughts to-day a 
living force, while its creative springs are choked and half- 
forgotten? Something more than we now superficially see 
in the ideas, something more than v/e now pityingly learn 
of the man, must have belonged to Kousseau and to his 
books. Madame de Stael, it seems to me, has discerned 
this something, and has crystallized it in her phrase. 
Rousseau had the power — the only power that could make 
headway in his time — to raise virtue out of its usual place 
as a duty, out of its lower rank as an instinct, into the 
effective position of a passion. This moral enthusiasm of 
his, spreading through France, through Europe, and into 
America, became the greatest single force that modern his- 
tory has known. 

The Jesuits had preached a perfunctory, self-seeking 
virtue; the Jansenists, those "Christians who weep," had 
taught a true but hopeless and unattainable morality; the 
philosophes had gravely dissected the corpse of virtue, dead 
at their hands; the femmes cf esprit, singeing their wings 
in the candle of the court, had made epigrams upon the ten 
commandments in the intervals of breaking them ; and the 
common people, the only real practisers of morality, had 
lived rightly in obedience to an instinct not far above the 
animal. It remained for Rousseau to quicken this objective 
virtue, this plaything of society, this groping of the people, 
into a vital passion, hurrying all — priests, philosophers, 



ROUSSEAU. 165 

women, and dumb millions — into the vortex of revolu- 
tion. 

Himself a living emotion, Eousseau, during the few in- 
tense years of his literary productiveness, rose far above 
ordinary hysteria into a divine ecstasy, wherein his weak 
body and sensual mind often misled him, wherein he con- 
fused erotic with celestial visions, wherein he blindly 
battled, uncertain of his real aim; but through which he 
swayed France and made history. 

I have no intention of reviewing that lesson in mental 
pathology called the Coyifessions. Rousseau's love of para- 
dox led him, undoubtedly, to picture himself in evil, as he 
believed himself to be in everything, unlike all other men. 
To this conceit of singularity we owe the paraded frankness 
that none the less offends because prurient ignorance mas- 
querades as innocence. To a study of Emile, however, the 
Confessions are a necessary footnote. They show the forces 
that, for forty years, caroused and quarrelled within him 
before Rousseau reached serious manhood, and was ready to 
utter truths strong with the bitter strength of self-abase- 
ment. 

These confessions, the only published self -analysis patho- 
logically complete, make plain the fatal defect of their 
author's moral structure. He was cursed with an inherited 
weakness of will which was fostered by mal-education. 
This champion of freedom was morally slavish. His imagi- 
nation alone soared heavenward; he himself burrowed, in- 
ertly, in the dark places of earth. 

A. motherless boy, of a highly emotional temper, of a 
moral habit that lacked reactive force, he is brought up in 
a Calvinistic atmosphere by a weak father and an indulgent 
aunt. With a training exaggerating his natural defects, 
he is bound, at an early age, to uncongenial tasks, and, 
shirking them, is branded as a blockhead. He is of the 



156 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

stamp of man that does not struggle against odds, finding 
it so much easier, for tlie moment, to claim the Bohemian 
privilege of flight. A trifling incident ^ — the locking of 
the city gates while he is outside the walls of Geneva — 
gives him the necessary excuse, and he breaks loose from 
society in his sixteenth year, to enter it again only after 
his thirtieth year. 

He crosses the Swiss border into Savoy, is received into 
the fold of the Church, as was the friendly custom towards 
Protestant vagabonds, — who found this a pleasant alter- 
native to starvation, — is sent, for dogmatic training, to 
a vivacious little animal, Madame de Warens,^ and leads 
with her and her chaotic household a pseudo-idyllic, kennel- 
poetic existence, in which he finds the happiness that pro- 
longed youth and postponed responsibility give to weak and 
dreamy natures. He wanders in and out of her life, now 
into Italy, now into France, and back again to the arcadian 
bower of her farm-house Les Charmettes. One guesses 
that he fancied himself a modern Gil Bias, the echo of that 
immortal scamp is so distinct. But it is a bourgeois echo. 
Kousseau is too often a lackey in spirit, however exalted his 
sentiments ; while Gil Bias, frankly servile, has yet a man- 
liness of spirit, as well as a sense of humor, that save him 
from degradation. 

On the other hand, Kousseau 's love of nature is as deep 
and beautiful as it is rare. He has that feeling for the 
sublimity and dignity of the external world which, in the 
growth of materialism, has become almost a lost sense. 
This, and his unconquerable youthfulness, redeem these 
years with Madame de Warens from mere swinishness. 

In his thirtieth year this idyl ends; he leaves Les Char- 

1 Conf. , Liv. I. 38 ; Morley, Bousseau, Vol. I. 28. 

2 Goyif., II. 44 ; Morley, L 47 (Ch. III.). 



ROUSSEAU. 157 

mettes, goes to Paris, and plunges disastrously into political 
life, following an embassy to Venice.^ Eeturning, he takes 
to himself a stupid and evil wench, Therese Le Vasseur,^ 
and assumes, in a measure, the long-avoided burdens of 
society. The curse of weakness, however, has yet to fall 
upon him. Not content with escaping his share of neigh- 
borly duty, he shirks parental obligation, and sends his 
five children, against the pleadings of poor, ignorant The- 
rese, to the foundling hospital.^ This is the sombre back- 
ground against which play the fires, celestial or volcanic, 
of the remainder of his ill-poised life. 

In his fortieth year his intellect, or, rather, his emotions, 
for his genius was nervous rather than intellectual, dissever 
themselves from his baser side, and, in ten years of exal- 
tation, of sensual tumult aggravated by bodily pain, he 
produces his four great books, — the Discourse on Ine- 
quality, The New Heloisa, the Social Contract, and, finally, 
Emile.'^ 

In this period of exaltation, almost of emotional insanity, 
it is not Rousseau, lover of the wretched Therese, ungrate- 
ful dependent of Madame d'fipinay,^ sickly worshipper 
of Madame d'Houdetot, who speaks. It is some far higher 
voice using him as those better men, the Hebrew prophets, 
were used, as an emotional mouthpiece, unworthy otherwise 
than through exquisite keenness of intellectual vibration to 
be the herald of liberty. He was, to change the metaphor, 
the instrument with which some divine Orpheus chose to 

1 Conf., VII. 286 ; Morley, I. 98. 

2 Conf., VII. .321 ; Morley, I. 104. 

3 Conf., VII. 335 ; Morley, I. 118. 

4 The Discourse on Inequality was published in 1753, The New 
Heloisa in 1761, the Social Contract and ^rnile in the spring of 1762. 

a Grimm's Madame d'Epinay ; Madame d'Houdetot was Madame 
d'Epinay's sister-in-law. See Conf, VII., VIII., and IX. 



158 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

tame tlie wild beasts of sensuality, greed, and vanity that 
were devouring the patient people, those people who, fired 
by the same strains, were soon to turn, and, with a cruelty 
taught by centuries of injustice, to rend their devourers. 

Reaction followed the publication of Emile. "The ner- 
vous strain had been too intense. Exasperated by unceas- 
ing physical pain, hounded on all sides, — by the priests 
because of his heresy, by the philosophers because of his 
theism, — driven even from Switzerland,^ haunted, we hope, 
by the ghosts of his lost children, tried beyond measure by 
the unamiable and unfaithful Therese, Rousseau grew irri- 
table and suspicious. This wretched condition may have 
been insanity,^ the sad death to which it led may have 
been suicide.^ What matter? Rousseau's paradoxes, that 
supreme paradox, his life, must remain enigmas until we 
learn the true relationship of mind to body, of soul to miijd. 
It is vain to attempt to reconcile the man and his work, to 
try to explain how Jean-Jacques could write grandly of 
unpractised virtues. Many times, indeed, his sentiments, 
pure in expression, exalted In form, are plainly pasteboard, 
especially when they are used to mask his own misdeeds. 
But, in a far greater number of instances, his language is 
indubitably that of sincerity, of earnestness, of belief, — 
the language, indeed, of inspiration. 

It is interesting to compare Rousseau with Locke, his 
avowed master in matters of education. Both were of a 
weak constitution, both suffered from painful chronic dis- 
ease. But j^hysical ills chastened Locke to serenity, tem- 
perance, and sweetness; while similar sufferings drove 

1 For the persecution of which Rousseau was a victim, see Morley, 
II., Ch. XI. 

2 Cf. Brunetiere, £tudes crit. sur Vhist. cle la lit. fran., IV. 325. 
{LafoUe cle J.-J. liousseau.) 

8 Cf. Musset-Pathay, Hist, de J.-J. M., I. 269. 



ROUSSEAU. 159 

Eousseau to irregularity, irritability, and a nioroseness 
ending in mania. But, curiously enough, Locke preached 
a materialism inconsistent with his devout, unselfish prac- 
tice; while the rebellious and unclean Eousseau, by his 
unswerving and hopeful theism,^ made himself almost the 
sole bulwark against the atheism of the philosophers. From 
him, in part, sprang the healthful religious reaction that 
Eome and Geneva had been equally powerless to arouse. 
The exemplary Locke was the chief agent in establishing a 
pernicious doctrine of despair from whose consequences 
Europe was saved, in no small degree, by the evil Eousseau. 
The movement of educational thought, it seems to me, 
follows closely the changing x^^^^ses of religious belief. 
Around the past, present, and future of childhood, religion 
centres itself, and it must therefore link itself with that 
natural modifier of evil and conserver of good, education. 
As the religious value and dignity of the child increases, so 
will the care of his education become of greater moment. 
The manifestations of this law, often obscure, are clearly 
apparent in the educational ideals of Comenius, springing, 
as they did, from his pan-Christian aims.'-^ They are equally 
evident in the system of the Jesuits, founded upon a de- 
vouring ambition of ecclesiastical power. We have seen ^ 
a striking example in the dominant idea of the Jansenists, 

1 See Profession de foi du vicaire Savoyard, in Emile (Liv. IV, 295). 
" Though I be born on a desert island, though I see no other man than 
myself, though I never learn what once was done in a corner of the 
world ; if I exercise my reason, if I cultivate it, if I make good use 
of the simple faculties which God has given me, I shall learn of my 
own impulse to know Him, to love Him, to love His works, to desire 
the good that He wills, and to fulfil, for His sake, ah my duties upon 
earth. What can all the learning of mankind teach me more ? " 
(p. 348.) 

2 See note, p. 92, 
8 See p. 141. 



160 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

whose doctrine of grace compelled them to watch the child 
unceasingly, lest, led astray by his evil nature, he break 
the slender thread holding him to salvation. Rousseau, no 
less solicitous, based the necessity of vigilance upon an 
opposite belief. He feared from without what the Port 
Royalists dreaded from within. To him, good was natural, 
and evil external; to them, evil was natural, and good not 
only external but supernatural. In other words, the Jan- 
senist teachers believed themselves to have in keeping souls 
lost from the beginning, and to be saved only through 
Divine intervention; wliile Eousseau believed the teacher 
to guard souls saved from the beginning, and to be lost only 
through human perversion, — antipodal creeds which reached 
the same end in securing to the child a watchfulness that 
is the price of education no less than of liberty. This lesson 
of pedagogic vigilance was a contribution to educational 
progress second only to Rousseau's chief gift, the inspira- 
tion of moral fervor. 

Jean-Jacques's central idea, in his sleepless care of fimile, 
is to keep the boy unspotted from the world. He conceives 
a soul not unlike Aristotle's image of the mind,^ — a 
smoothed tablet upon which Nature is to write the laws of 
morality. But it is a tablet u]Don which vice makes deeper 
impress than virtue. "Ignorance is not fatal," he de- 
clares,^ "but error is." Nature, Rousseau believes, is in- 
fallible. She will develop virtue and knowledge in all 
children, provided we shelter childhood so that her pro- 
cesses are neither disturbed nor distorted. Nature has her 
own ways of teaching; our duty is fulfilled when we allow 

1 See ante^ p. lOG. 

2 ^mile, III. 171. " Souviens-toi, souviens-toi sans cesse que I'igno- 
rance n'a jamais fait de mal, que I'erreur seule est funeste, et qu'on 
ne s'Sgare point par ce qu'on ne sait pas, mais par ce qu'on croit 
savoir." 



ROUSSEAU. 161 

her freely to exert her influence. This mental laissez /aire 
is Locke's doctrine of sensationalism carried, in the direc- 
tion of free play^ to its extreme. It does not involve, hoAV- 
ever, a derived doctrine of materialism; for Kousseau 
is steadfast in his acknowledgment of an inward power of 
moral discrimination, which he calls conscience.^ 

Taking, then, as his basis of belief, the assertion that 
every child is innately perfect, that good is from Nature 
and evil is from Man,'^ he finds the task of the teacher to 
be an actively negative one. The tutor must not teach the 
pupil, he must not attempt to directly mould his growth, 
but he must so hedge him about that evil shall enter only 
as he wills, and only in definite and well-directed sequence. 
This sequence is determined by the grouping of the child's 
development into three distinct periods. In the first, ex- 
tending from birth to the age of twelve, he is to be made a 
perfect physical being; in the second, extending to the age 
of puberty, he is to be made a critical or understanding 
being; in the third, beginning with puberty, he is to blos- 
som into a social and emotional man. Before taking up 
this plan of education, let us see upon what it is based. 

In Eousseau's day the type of human perfection was the 
noble savage. By so far as the primitive state of man was 
attained, in that measure, it was believed, did humanity 
approach the ideal state of Eden. This noble savage, 
existing in some fair Pacific isle or on the banks of the 
Orinoco, was a favorite puppet of the eighteenth century. 
His was perfect happiness. Vice was unknown to him, 

1 "There is in the depths of the soul an innate principle of justice 
and of virtue through which ... we judge our actions and those of 
others as good and bad, and to this principle I give the name, con- 
science." — J^mile, IV. 324. 

2"6tez nos funestes progres, otez nos erreurs et nos vices, otez 
I'ouvrage de I'homme, et tout est bien." — Emile, IV. 315. 



162 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

despair was a stranger, and death came only as ripeness 
comes to the fruit, the proper climax of a life of sunshine. 
The worship of this mythical savage was not unnatural. 
His naked freedom seemed the only sort possible in the 
hard and evil political conditions, the false and diseased 
social relations, preceding the great revolutions. Rous- 
seau, an emotional vagabond, thirsty for the spring of eter- 
nal youth with its primitive and irresponsible pleasures, 
could scarcely fail to join in the idealization of this untram- 
melled savage. He went still farther, and imagined the 
peasant, without aspirations, without emotions except of 
sense, without social obligations and conventionality, to be 
a kind of savage, placed in the midst of civilization to 
neutralize its evils. He idealized the peasant, extolled his 
passive virtues, and gave him a social weight that had no 
small effect in bringing about his subsequent freedom. 
Adopting this ideal wild man and his tamed prototype, the 
peasant, — both so different from their squalid and debased 
originals, — Eousseau reached the unwarranted conclusion 
that, since the natural man is perfect and the civilized 
man is vile, nature must be the true source of virtue. 
Therefore, he argued, Smile's education should be from 
nature, and the boy should be brought into contact with 
man only at the latest possible day, at the evil hour when 
that cursed relation can no longer be postponed. 

This prime error gave birth to many others, and, in the 
very beginning, forced Jean-Jacques to alienate his model 
pupil from society and even from his kindred, in order to 
secure for him the necessary atmosphere of freedom. It 
forced him to make Emile an orphan, and to place him ab- 
solutely in the power of a tutor who should mould fate for 
him up to the very door of matrimony. A sad paradox, 
that impelled Jean- Jacques, after celebrating the holiness 
of the married state, after painting, in The New Heloisa, 



KOUSSEAU. 163 

SO exquisite a picture of home life, after arousing public 
opinion against the cruel baby -farming universal among the 
wealthier French, to destroy Emile's home and to consign 
him to the barren affections of a celibate tutor. By an 
added paradox, an odd perversion that limits Rousseau's 
system to bounds almost as narrow as those set by Mon- 
taigne and Locke, Emile is well-born and wealthy, — for- 
tunate, therefore, in the very accidents which Jean- Jacques 
despised. But obscurer passages, as well as other educa- 
tional writings of Rousseau, show us that these limitations 
are not to be permanent; they are unessential when all men 
shall be, or shall have been, ^fimiles. This first figure, this 
educational model, is a modified creation, an amphibious 
being, suited to the slime of the old order of things, as well 
as to the free air of the new. When his likeness shall have 
so multiplied as to create a society of Emiles, then the 
tutor will merge into the parent,^ and rank and riches will 
expand into the rank of intellect and the riches of mutual 
helpfulness. 

For Rousseau is distinctly an individualist-socialist; that 
is, he believes in the absolute mental and spiritual inde- 
pendence of man, but not in his social freedom. Fondly as 
he dreamed of the idyllic state of savagery, he was both too 
wise and too tame to refuse the idea of social obligation. 
"There is much difference," he says,^ "between the natural 
man living in the midst of nature and the natural man 
dwelling in the social state. Emile is not a savage to be 
banished to a wilderness ; he is a savage made to live in 

1 "The true nurse is the mother, just as the true teacher is the 
father. . . . The child . . . will be better brought up by a judicious 
though narrow father than by the most competent tutor in the world ; 
because zeal supplies talent far more readily than talent supplies zeal." 
— £mile, I. 20. 

2 £mile, III. 221. 



164 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

cities. He must know how to make a living, to profit by 
his neighbors, and to live, if not like them, at least with 
them." 

The absolute freedom of his pupil is to end, therefore, 
as soon as dawning manhood proclaims him a social creat- 
ure. At that moment, forsaking his pasturage in the free 
field of nature, he is to be harnessed to the car of mutual 
obligation and to be fastened with a yoke that only death 
can throw off. But, in the truly social state that is looked 
forward to in the Social Contract, this yoke is of the lightest. 

Behold, then, Emile, galloping in absolute happiness, 
through the formative years ! He is an animal, pure and 
simple, knowing no law except the inexorable ''Hold! " of 
circumstance, no guiding voice but the "Come!" of his 
inclinations. "Nature," Rousseau says, "cannot err," and 
so long as she does not impose her automatic veto, the child 
is right in doing as he pleases. But — and this is a very 
important limitation — tliis pure state of nature is encom- 
passed by the impure state of man. The sway of nature 
cannot be absolute unless the child be isolated in a thrice- 
guarded fold of ignorance. This, however, is impossible. 
No defence but has its vulnerable point. A time must come 
when knowledge of evil shall have taken full possession. 
The innocence secured prior to that time can be little more 
than artificial, maintained by sleepless vigilance. To this 
police task the tutor is chiefly to apply himself, serving as 
a shield to the child, and, as the pupil develops, admitting 
him, in elaborate and roundabout ways, to ever greater 
acquaintance with evil. 

Rousseau gravely lays bare much of the machinery, cum- 
brous enough, of this artificial naturalism. The spectacle 
would be comic were it not haunted by the shadows of the 
five children whose honest eyes would have shamed him 
out of his folly of deceit. In no place is his ignorance of 



ROUSSEAU. 165 

real children so apparent; in no part of Emih does his 
total lack of humor lead him so far astray. The theatrical 
tricks exhibited with such pride are so tawdry, so ridicu- 
lously inartistic, that it would be a dull child indeed ^vho 
should fail to laugh them into oblivion. This pedagogic 
charlatanism needs no argument of refutation other than 
that given by Rousseau himself, who condemns old methods 
of teaching because they foster deceit, and yet bases his 
own system upon elaborately acted lies. What, we wonder, 
would be Emile's reverence for Jean-Jacques after he should 
have discovered, as any real child would, the strings that 
pulled the moral puppet-show, pretending to be a drama of 
real life? 

Rousseau's deification of the untutored savage led him 
into another fallacy, a scorn of books. ^ Himself a book- 
spawner, a diligent reader in his special paths, an accused 
plagiarist, this scorn is, at least, humorous. It is a pity 
that the faculty of laugliing at himself was not given to 
Jean- Jacques. It would have spared him much laughter 
from the rest of humanity. Indeed, it is a misfortune foi^ 
even a genius to take himself too seriously. Remembering 
the mountains of useless books and the silly worship of the 
modest hills of good books, he sweepingly denounces all 
literature for youth, excepting one volume, Robinson 
Crusoe.'^ " Well-ordered brains," he says,^ "are the surest 
preservers of knowledge ; " but he forgets that books are 
the medium of exchange between these brains, that they 
are the common money into which present riches and past 
treasures of human growth and discovery are transmuted 
to serve as an inheritance for posterity and a common fund 
for mankind. He would deprive a child of this ready-made 

1 " I hate books ; they teach one only to talk of things about which 
one knows nothing." — Emile^ III. 194. 

2 ^mile, III. 195. » Ihid. 



166 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

fortune, and would make each brain create for itself, out of 
tlie sphinx-like earth, all science, all art, and all philoso- 
phy. He would make each new-born being an absolute and 
independent microcosm. "Let him not learn science, let 
him invent it," he rather sententiously remarks.^ And 
again, 2 " The . scientific air kills science." . . . "Emile 
will never know optics. He will never have dissected 
insects: he will not have counted the spots on the sun: 
he will know neither microscopes nor telescopes. Your 
learned pupils will deride him. They will not be wrong; 
because, before using these instruments, I mean that he 
shall invent them, and you are right in believing that that 
will not be early." ^ 

Eousseau is seldom inconsistent in the parallels he draws 
between the childhood of the individual and that of soci- 
ety. Without formal purpose of comparison, he discovers 
between these two embryonic states analogies that bear 
directly upon his theories. Unfortunately, he could not, 
even had he wished, study primitive man, and he had 
deliberately forfeited the daily lessons given by^a grow- 
ing child. His savage, therefore, no less than his Emile, is 
a creature of the imagination. Eeasoning from this half- 
known child to this unknown savage, he has little difficulty, 
of course, in deducing a parallel order of natural develop- 
ment in harmony with his preconceived ideas. He finds his 
imaginary child mentally self-sufficient and unsocial, and 
there are children so unfortunately born; ergo, man is by 
nature solitary and independent; ergo, society is artificial. 
He finds the thoughts of the child to be simple and sense- 
limited, as, superficially, they are; hence man is not, by 
nature, a reflective being, and subtlety is the offspring of 
civilization. He sees the child free from sentiment and 

1 ^rnile, III. 173. ^ ^mile^ III. 183. ^ Emile, III. 223. 



BOUSSEAU. 167 

complex emotions, — a most unwarranted observation ; ^ — 
ergo, the passions of savages are limited, like those of 
beasts. Finally, he denies to the child the capacity to 
reason, and limits the savage to the narrow horizon of im- 
mediate physical deduction. 

Scientific observation of mental processes, and patient 
study of primitive peoples, long ago exploded these false 
premises ; but Jean- Jacques honestly maintained them, and, 
reasoning backward in his vicious circle, reached the con- 
clusion that, since the savage has no new instincts except 
those invited or compelled by circumstance, so the child's 
development must await the pressing urgency of nature. 
From this springs his thesis that the social instinct arises 
only with the passions, that it must be defended from an 
earlier awakening, and that the time of its expansion 
should be, as long as possible, deferred. 

To make good his conception of society as a secondary 
condition, not a primitive law, of mankind, he accepts 
Hobbes's doctrine of selfishness,^ and bases the social in- 
stinct upon self-love. " When the power of an expanding 
soul," he says,^ "identifies me with my neighbor, then I 
wish to spare him suffering only that I may not suffer; I 
interest myself in him through self-love, and the basis of" 
(the Golden Rule) " is in nature itself, that fills me with a 
desire for happiness in whatever place I feel a consciousness 
of myself. . . . The love of man derived from the love 
of self is the principle of human justice." Upon this rather 
uncertain foundation rests the glowing benevolence devel- 

1 " Je n'ai jamais rencontre de personnalite plus profonde que chez 
les enfants," says, with truth, Mgr. Dupanloup. U Enfant (Paris, 
1874), 22. 

2 See Thomas Hobbes, Phil. Budiments concerning Government and 
Society (Vol. II. of Eng. Works, London, 1841), Ch. I. 

3 Emile, IV. 257 (note). 



168 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

oped in fimile. It has no root in philanthropy, but springs 
wholly from self-love, which, to render inadequately the 
carefully distinguished phrase of the French, is an outgrowth 
of self-regard, the first instinct of the new-born child. The 
law of self-preservation involves this self-regard, which, as 
it becomes conscious, must grow into self-love. At puberty 
it expands into love of offspring, and, according to Rous- 
seau, must develop, under the stimulus of emotional self- 
projection, into a love of mankind, or philanthropy. Thus, 
by one of those clever transformation scenes, — not to say 
stage-tricks, — -in which Jean- Jacques was fertile, he out- 
witted the materialists. Granting their premise of human 
selfishness, he made this very selfishness the father of 
philanthropy. 

Ingenious as is this reconciliation of hostile theories, it 
led to the gravest of Eousseau's errors, the postponement 
of all ethical teaching, all social knowledge, all moral habit 
until puberty ; ^ and to the parcelling out of the child's life 
into well-detined stages. It is true that the first twelve 
years of life are, mainly, animal; it is true that in them 
the body is the main object of care, and that, without this 
care, all later education will be a mockery ; but it is equally 
true that, in certain directions, these are the great acquisi- 
tive years. More than this, childhood is free from that 
subtle foe, ennui. There are many essential tools of the 
intellect that can be secured only by a treadmill repetition 

1 "The end that should be sought in the education of a young man 
is to form his heart, his judgment, and his mind, and that in the order 
named. Most masters, pedants especially, regard acquisition and the 
heaping up of information as the only object of a good education, for- 
getting that often, as Moliere says : — 

" ' A wise fool is a greater fool than an ignorant fool ! ' " — Projet 
pour Vkluc. de M. de Ste.-Marie (Siipp. a la Collection des CEuv. Comp. 
de J.- J. Bousseau, Paris, 1782, IIL 13). 



ROUSSEAU. 169 

of effort. Only either the dull or the exceptionally patient 
mind can experience this monotony without rebellion, except 
in this early exuberance of force, when the high heat of 
eager youth helps wonderfully the slow blows of dull 
repetition. Rousseau recognizes this truth so far as it 
applies to mechanical skill, and, rightly, demands that in 
these early years the child's senses shall be thoroughly and 
accurately trained; but he does not perceive — or his 
theories will not permit him to perceive — that there is a 
mechanism of the intellect, a mechanic art of the mind, 
skill in which must be secured, if ever, in these first years, 
when the child is patient of everything except idleness, and 
is ready, when tired of one monotonous task, to put his 
whole energy into another. This childhood time, more- 
over, by an extension of the preceding argument, is that in 
which are formed either good habits, the friendly chains, or 
bad habits, the torturing spurs, of passion. Jean- Jacques 
thinks himself a foe to habit, and, while under this impres- 
sion, says,^ *'The only habit that a child ought to acquire 
is that of contracting none." This freedom from habit, he 
believes, is a necessary accompaniment of liberty, forgetting 
that he only has time to be free whose actions are, by the 
aid of habit, so nicely adjusted that, in the larger things of 
life, he can act unhampered by petty, drudging details of 
mere existence. 

Rousseau's aim, in these first twelve years, is, he says,^ 
"not to gain time but to lose it." Time is inexorable, 
however, and the art of social living must be acquired; 
must be gained too, so far as concerns its conventional signs 
and common stock of knowledge,- before the tumultuous 
years following what Rousseau calls the second birth, — the 
birth of sex. He crowds, therefore, into the two or more 

1 £mile, I. 39. ^ j^^nile, II. 75. 



170 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

years following the twelfth, so much of this conventional 
acquirement — the ordinary teaching of the schools — as he 
approves, believing that the fallow years preceding will 
have made a soil so strong and weedless that this short 
time will give a harvest as rich, nay, far more rich, than is 
the tangled garden-growth of the usual school-planting. 

It is not worth while to follow his rather vague pruning 
of the pedagogic tree. As, in the first period, the question 
always to be asked is. What are the dictates of Nature? 
so, in this second stage, the question is. What are the dic- 
tates of utility? "Of what use is it?"^ — that is the 
shibboleth by which to decide whether or not a subject 
shall enter the boy's range of study. Jean- Jacques re- 
frains, wisely, from limiting the word utility, and avoids, 
thereby, a trap of definition set by his own hands. 

Putting aside, then, this minor matter of a choice of 
studies, and accepting as true Rousseau's picture of a boy 
brought to his twelfth year by his system of negative 
activity, we may, nevertheless, question the wisdom of 
crowding this task of study into years which are truly, as 
Eousseau maintains, the years of greatest relative strength, 
but which are, no less, years in which the poise of the 
expanding nervous system is easily overthrown. Further- 
more, to open for the first time, simultaneously with the 
dawning of the passions, the wide and bewildering prospect 
of social and emotional life, is, to say the least, a hazard- 
ous trial of human nature, even if one concedes, as is 
difficult, the perfect moral balance inhering in a child 
brought to his fifteenth year with no principles of action 
beyond self-regard and immediate utility. With here a 
fatal tendency to paradox, Rousseau has denied to the moral 
nature that even and co-ordinate growth which, he sees, is 

1 ^mile, III. 187. 



ROUSSEAU. 171 

essential to right physical development. He imagines his 
orphaned puppet, Emile, a moral Harlequin, changing, 
instanta, his entire mental and spiritual garb. 

Having touched upon these major fallacies of Eousseau's, 
I will not presume to discuss minor flaws, about which 
there may be a wide diversity of opinion. Let us turn 
again, rather, to the more congenial study of the strength 
of his book. In doing so, it must not be forgotten that 
our debt to Eousseau is not to him as an originator.^ He 
was, rather, a concentrator of a class of ideas that had 
wandered, without definite lodgement, for two hundred 
years. If, into a saturated solution of certain salts, we let 
fall one tiny last drop, instantly the liquor solidifies. The 
slow drops added to the point of saturation count as nothing 
before this final magic one. Such a last drop in the chang- 
ing constitution of society were the writings of Rousseau. 
His cry of liberty really brought freedom; therefore this 
successful voice drowns the murmur of the tens of thousand 
earlier voices that had cried in vain. His call for freedom 
found the world ready to respond. Especially in education 
was his time most opportune. The very year of Emile was 
that of the expulsion of the Jesuits. Something must be 
found to supply their place in the domain of teaching. The 
political ferment was such that any change, be it only 
radical enough, was welcome. The wide spreading of mate- 
rialism had produced a swarm of visionaries praying for a 
prophet. Even the enmity of the "Philosoi^hers," of the 
Calvinists, and of the Churchmen — each body, in its waj^, 
fuming, arguing, and thundering against the book — was, 
vulgarly considered, a marvellous advertisement. Emile 



1 " Rousseau at least invented new form, and that is well known to 
be often as great an exploit as the discovery of new matter." — 
MoRLEY, Eousseau^ II. 198. 



172 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

flashed over Europe in a blaze of excitement, leaving an 
impress of one kind or another in every fibre of civilization. 

But it had more solid grounds of influence than mere 
fortuitous ones. I have already attempted to show the 
main foundation of its power, which was its supreme 
aspiration towards virtue. But Rousseau went farther 
than to stimulate vague yearnings. He proved that virtue 
springs from liberty and is, in its turn, the parent of 
liberty, of the only real freedom that man knows. Emile 
begins with this idea, and, through its wandering paradoxes, 
clings to this thread of principle. Others had preached, 
and would continue to preach, the rights of man; some, 
even at that early day, had proclaimed the rights of women; 
Rousseau championed the rights of the child, — the right to 
his mother's breast, the right to his father's guidance, the 
right to a home, the right to free physical and mental 
development, the right to innocence, the right, finally, to 
be happy. 

In this advocacy of freedom, especially in this plea for 
happiness, Emile did incalculable service to education. 
With all his capacity for personal, and often deserved, 
unhappiness, Rousseau had the true measure of real happi- 
ness, for he found it to lie not in the multiplication of our 
wants but in the discipline of our desires. In this direction, 
fimile is consistently educated to a mental and physical 
stoicism that laughs at the sieges of ill-fortune, knowing 
itself garrisoned and victualled for a lifetime of assault. 
"There are two sorts of dependence," says Rousseau,^ 
"upon things, which is natural; upon men, which is arti- 
ficial. Dependence upon things, there being no question of 
morality, does not interfere with liberty or engender vice; 
dependence upon men, being contrary to order, propagates 

1 Emile, II. 65. 



ROUSSEAU. 173 

every vice and mutually depraves the master and the slave." 
From this is deduced his method of education. " Make the 
child dependent solely upon things, " he continues. " Experi- 
ence or weakness should supply the place of laws. Grant 
nothing to him because he asks it, but only because he 
needs it. . . . Let him feel his liberty both in his actions 
and in yours. ... In receiving your help with a sort of 
humiliation, let him look forward to the time when he can 
dispense with it, and Avhen he will have attained the honor 
of taking care of himself." ^ " Let him know only that he is 
weak and you are strong. . . . Let him feel early, on his 
proud neck, the heavy yoke that nature puts upon man, the 
hard yoke of necessity under which, for discipline, all must 
bend; let him see this necessity in things, never in the 
caprice of man; let the curb that restrains him be force, not 
authority. . . . Finally, there is no middle course; either 
you must require nothing at all of him, or you must compel 
him to absolute obedience. The worst of all educations is 
to leave him vibrating between his will and yours, disputing 
ceaselessly with you as to which is the master."^ 

This is not, as might appear at first, a grim doctrine of 
necessity, cousin-german to the philosophy of despair. 
Eather is it an added plea for that early happiness which 
Rousseau believed was the right of every child. " Men, be 
humane," he pleads,^ "... Love infancy; abet its play, 
its joy, its affectionate instincts. . . . Why will you fill 
with bitterness and grief these first, short years which will 
never return to him any more than they can come back to 
you? . . . Why do you add to his inevitable ills, without 
being sure that the present sorrows are a draft upon the 
future? and how will you prove that these bad instincts 
which you pretend to correct are not a product of your 

1 ^mile, II. 65. 2 J^rnile, II. 73. 3 :^miie, H. 57. 



174 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

senseless education rather than of Nature? Wretched fore- 
sight, that renders a human being actually miserable upon 
the hope, well or ill founded, of some time making him 
happy." 

First, freedom for the child; then, happiness; or, indeed, 
both first; since they are, Rousseau believes, correlative, — 
the unhappy child not being free, nor the enslaved child, 
happy. Freedom and happiness secured, the next essential 
of education is action. Freedom is a birthright; happiness, 
a birth-privilege; action, a birth-duty. The child may 
demand of us the right to be untrammelled and to be guarded 
from sorrow; we, in turn, may require of him the duty of 
doing. Rousseau's fervor in preaching the gospel of action 
would almost persuade us that he himself was never a 
drone; his strenuous plea that Emile shall, even from 
infancy, feel the weight of social obligation, makes us half 
forget the forty selfish years of Jean-Jacques's life. He 
saves himself by a sophism. " Out of society," he says with 
complacency,^ "'the isolated man, owing nothing to any one, 
has a right to live as he chooses." Doubtless, he believed 
himself entitled to this right, confounding lawlessness with 
isolation and counting his obligations to Madame de Warens 
and to other Bohemian benefactors as nothing. "But," he 
continues,^ "in society, where, of necessity," (man) "lives 
at the cost of others, he owes in work the price of his 
support. This rule admits of no exception. To work is a 
duty which social man cannot shirk. Rich or poor, high 
or low, every idle citizen is a knave." ^ Following this 
dictum with a rhapsody upon manual labor, he changes the 
ground of his argument to that of utility, and makes an 

1 :^mile, III. 209. 2 /^jr^Z. 

3 " Temperance and work are the two true medicines for man : 
work sharpens his appetite, and temperance prevents him from abus- 
ing it. "— j&^miZe, I. 29. 



ROUSSEAU. 175 

extraordinary prophecy regarding the aristocracy of France, 
so soon to be striving, with clumsy fingers and dull brains, 
to earn their daily bread. Ascending to a higher plane, he 
continues, "But it is of less consequence that he learn a 
trade merely that he may have a trade, than that he may 
conquer that prejudice which despises labor. You, you say, 
will never be reduced to earning your living. Eh ! so much 
the worse, so much the worse for you. But, no matter. 
Work, then, not from necessity, but for glory. Lower 
yourself to the laborer's level in order to rise above your 
own. To rule fortune and fate, begin by making yourself 
independent of them." 

"I insist that Emile shall learn a trade," he repeats.^ 
"An honest trade, at least, I hear you say? What is that? 
Is not every trade which is of public use, honest? I would 
not have him an embroiderer, a gilder, or a varnisher, like 
Locke's gentlemen jjupils; I would not have him a musi- 
cian, an actor, or a maker of books. ... I would prefer 
him to be a shoemaker rather than a poet; I would rather 
have him pave highways than make porcelain flowers. . . . 
So let us choose an honest trade, remem.bering that there is 
no honesty without usefulness." What untold mischief has 
this fantastic doctrine of utility wrought! AVhat a host of 
beautiful things, material and spiritual, have been sacrificed 
on this altar of the useful! To how narrow and hard a 
path has it confined the divine feet of Liberty, and with 
what chains of gold has it dragged her down ! Slowly, but 
very slowly, is this path widening to include within its 
borders all good things, are these fetters dropping off to 
free Liberty from her last tyrant, commercialism. 

But we are not concerned with the remote consequences 
of a utilitarianism whose immediate tendency was a health- 

1 ^mile, III. 211. 



176 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

fill reaction against a false philosophy. The tonic of pure 
utility was necessary to a society which valued a man in 
proportion to his idleness and folly. The dignity of labor 
was a new lesson that the aristocracy, spelling out as a 
pastime, under Jean-Jacques's tuition, were soon to learn, 
painfully, under the bitter rod of hunger. This doctrine 
of utility gave a new basis to education. How widely 
different has been the educational ideal since Eousseau 
preached this gospel, I need not point out ; let us see, 
however, his development of it. 

"To live, is the trade I mean to teach. On leaving me," 
(my pupil) " will be, I intend, neither a magistrate, nor a 
soldier, nor a priest; he will be a man."^ . . . "Kemem- 
ber, the spirit of my school is not to teach the child many 
things, but to never let any save right and clear ideas enter 
his mind. If he know nothing, no matter, provided he be 
not deceived, and I put truth into his head merely to save 
it from the errors that, otherwise, would enter . . . 
Keason, judgment, come slowly; prejudices rush in pell- 
mell; it is from them that he must be saved." ^ . . . " The 
proper study for man is that of his surroundings. So long 
as he knows himself only on the physical side, he must 
study himself through his relations to things ; that is his 
childhood task ; when he begins to feel his moral being, he 
must study himself through his relations to men; that is 
his life-work."^ 

"... When I see a young man, in the period of his 
greatest activity, limited to studies that are purely specula- 
tive, and then, later, thrown without a shadow of experi- 
ence upon the world and into affairs, it seems to me that 
reason and nature are equally offended, and I am no whit 
surprised that so few know how to conduct themselves. 

1 :^mile, I. 11. 2 :^miie^ m. 177. 3 ^mile, IV. 230. 



ROUSSEAU. 177 

What mischievous spirit impels the teaching of so many 
useless things while the art of action counts for nothing? 
They pretend to fit " (children) " for society, and they teach 
each one as though he were to pass his life meditating in a 
cell or arguing in the air." ^ 

"Of the knowledge within our reach, a part is false, a 
part is useless, a part serves to foster pride in him who 
possesses it. The small portion that really contributes to 
our well-being is alone worthy of the study of a wise man, 
and, consequently, of a child whom one would have wise. 
It is not a question of knowing everything, but only what 
is useful." "^ Eousseau takes pains to show us, however, that 
his aim is a higher one than mere bread-winning. The 
trade of living that he would teach is the "Plain living and 
high thinking" of Wordsworth.^ "If I have made myself 
understood," -he says,* in summing up his discussion of 
manual training, " it must be seen how, by means of physi- 
cal exercise and manual labor, I lead my pupil, insensibly, 
to a taste for reflection and meditation, to balance in him 
the idleness that would result from his indifference to public 
opinion, and from the dormancy of his passions. He must 
work like a peasant and think like a philosopher, in order 
that he may not be as lazy as a savage. The great secret 
of education is to make the exercise of the body and that of 
the mind serve always to relieve each other." 

Still other two great truths that men have been slow to 
recognize did Eousseau teach. The first, that no learning 
is real and enduring which does not spring from a desire to 
learn ; the second, that acquisition which comes from 
rivalry and prize-hunting is not only false, but morally 
unsound. "I would rather a hundred times," he says,^ 

1 ^miU, IV. 275. 2 :^mile, III. 171. 

3 See, " friend ! I know not which way I must look." 
■1 ^mi7e, III. 218. ^ £miU, III. 194. 



178 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

" that Emile should learn nothing, than that he should learn 
through rivalry or vanity. Only, every year, I shall mark 
the progress that he will have made; I shall compare it 
with that to be made next year. ... I shall thus excite 
him without making him jealous of any one. He will wish 
to surpass himself; well and good. I see no wrong in self- 
emulation." 

Eousseau's Emile, then, is a young man vigorous, free, 
happy, alert, unashamed, with no false notions, with many 
true ones. He loves mankind because he respects him- 
self. He is jealous of none, afraid of none. He is as 
innocent as he is manly; as enthusiastic as he is level- 
headed. He is full of sentiment without sentimentality, 
of love without brute passion. He is a cheerful companion 
to himself, a wise teacher to his children, an unselfish 
member of society, a far-seeing unit of the state, a tolerant 
citizen of the world; in short, in the full sense of the word, 
he is a virtuous man. 

However strongly we may doubt the adequacy of the 
means, we cannot doubt the perfection of the ends of Emile's 
education. In making society conscious of the wisdom and 
importance of these ends, Rousseau began a new era in 
education. More than a hundred years have passed; the 
world has progressed, but it has moved along the lines that 
Rousseau indicated. The problems of education are receiv- 
ing ever greater thought, but the goal is still that at which 
Rousseau aimed. The world-Emile is still evolving, slowly, 
with many slips and discouragements, but his ends are still 
those which Jean- Jacques saw, and, in his wild, paradoxi- 
cal way, forced mankind to see. 



PESTALOZZI AND FKOEBEL. 179 



CHAPTER VIII. 

PESTALOZZI AND FROEBEL. 

Senses, Heart, and Soul must be educated together. 

pestalozzi, perfecter of rousseau ; love ; the use of fanati- 
CISM ; PESTALOZZl'S career; "LEONARD AND GERTRUDE"; HIS 
SYSTEM ; YVERDUN ; HIS PEDAGOGY ; HIS PRINCIPLES ; HIS METH- 
ODS ; HIS SPIRIT; " ANSCHAUUNG " ; HIS INFLUENCE; FROEBEL; 
CONTRASTED WITH PESTALOZZI ; FROEBEl'S AIM ; HIS PRINCIPLES ; 
THE kindergarten; the TRUE FROEBEL; THE FALSE FROEBEL; 
THE "EDUCATION OF MAN " ; THE RESULT OF FROEBEl'S WORK. 

At last the scale of education is complete. The harsh 
discord of medisevalism, thrown into wild promise of har- 
mony by Rabelais, was modulated, by slow tonal changes, 
until, with Rousseau, there remained only the dissonant 
note of isolation. This, Pestalozzi, the perfecter of Rous- 
seau, threw out. Replacing it by the true tonic, love, he 
sounded the full major chord of education. Upon this we 
are building, with many pauses, with many false notes, 
with many useless repetitions, the symphony of human 
perfectibility which, in centuries, may become harmonious 
with the music of the spheres. 

Dating from the Renaissance, one reform after another 
had slowly made way against human inertia, until, in 
Emile, was shown the ideal individual education. It re- 
mained only to adapt this impossible, selfish training to the 
normal conditions of the social state, in order to begin the 
work of expansion which is taking place to-day. This 



180 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

adaptation Pestalozzi achieved by bringing into educational 
processes the elements of sympathy, of interdependence, of 
spiritual harmony, or — in one word — of love. 

This vital Pestalozzian basis of education, love, had been 
half seen by many earlier reformers. Comenius especially 
had rightly founded his school within the mother's arms, 
and had expanded it continuously therefrom into universal 
knowledge. But his voice cried in a mental wilderness to 
ears not yet fine enough to heed a doctrine so simple and 
sublime. It required more than two centuries for the 
truths which he uttered to penetrate from the high level of 
his inspiration to the lower — which is, however, the per- 
manent and effective — level of popular understanding. 
And this slow ethical permeation was not enough. The 
common mind had to be awakened, had to be made aware 
of the vitality of truths which, unconsciously, it already 
held. To such ends the order of mind called fanatic is 
created, and cries its startling message to the world. As 
the slow drilling of the rock is fruitless without the sudden 
shock of powder which lays bare in an instant the hidden 
work of years, so all moral reforms must be consummated 
by the noisy work of fanaticism. 

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, born at Zurich in 1746,^ 
had, to a marked degree, the fanatic temper. An only 
child, brought up in semi-isolation by a widoAved mother 
and a doting servant, he imbibed from them the feminine 
ethical sense — a quality so different from the masculine.^ 

1 For the details of Pestalozzi's life, see Von Raumer, Gescli. der 
Fad., II. 365 (trans, in Barnard, Amer. Journ. of Ed., III. 401) ; and, 
especially, De Guimps, Pestalozzi (trans, by J. Russell). 

2 This ethical sense — whether we esteem it to be inherent or in- 
duced — has been, it seems to me, the chief element in determining 
that the growth of humanity should be upward rather than down- 
ward. Experience leads men, usually, towards conservatism in ethical 



PESTALOZZI AND FROEBEL. 181 

Ungainly, odd, a butt for stupid wits, he passed through 
a fiery ordeal that seared him forever against the sting of 
ridicule. Unpractical and self -forgetting, he entered upon 
life with that spirit of optimism, that disregard of conse- 
quences, without which fanaticism is impossible. Finally, 
his career — which was essentially constructive — fell upon 
a time of reaction from revolution, when the mad desire for 
tearing doAvn had been succeeded by an equal rage for build- 
ing up, when social speculations found ready belief, and 
schemes, no matter how monstrous, for creating a new 
heaven and a new earth seemed possible and easy. 

Bred to the law, Pestalozzi early recognized his total un- 
fitness for it. He turned, as have other unplaced geniuses, 
to the pursuit of farming, with a vague hope, perhaps, 
of finding at the great heart of nature the sympathy 
and comprehension which humanity denied to him. But 
her heart, too, was cold, and — more momentous — her 
bosom was unyielding, even of daily food. In five years 
he had exhausted his small resources, had reduced his wife 
and child to want, had failed utterly in agriculture, and 
had succeeded scarcely better in human farming; for the 
beggar children, whom, in his intense and uncalculating 
philanthropy, he had brought to his fallow fields, rewarded 
his loving efforts with ingratitude and petty crimes. 

The history of the eighteen years following this failure 
at Neuhof ^ — the years between 1780 and 1798 — is the old 

endeavor, towards acquiescence in evil, towards, in too many cases, 
pure cynicism. Tliis tendency would soon induce in humanity a dis- 
tinct slackening of moral effort were it not that each new generation 
remains, through its formative years, in an atmosphere that is created 
by women, and that is by them charged with those ethical beliefs, 
aspirations, and, if you please, chimeras which are the foundations 
of moral progress. 

1 Neuhof was a tract of about one hundred acres of barren, clayey 
land, near Birr, which Pestalozzi, backed by a Zurich firm, had pur- 



182 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

one of genius struggling to assert itself, of a voice with a 
message for humanity striving to make itself heard above 
the roar of commonplace. The chief tangible fruit of this 
bitter time was the book Leonard and Gertrude.^ Read 
this, and see how puerile it is, how too obvious are its 
moralities. Eead it a second time, and note how earnest 
it is, how exact and accurate are its peasant scenes. Eead 
it yet again, and recognize in it the outpouring of a rare 
soul, working, pleading, ready to be despised, for fellow- 
souls. 

The picture shown in Leonard and Gertrude is very 
crude. Everywhere is visible the rough hand of the 
painter, a strong, untiring hand, painting an eternal image, 
of which this in paper and print is the merest sketch. It 
is a madonna which he paints, a mother-picture, in which 
the wife, by right of her love, stands supreme, saving the 
husband, protecting and ennobling their children. Ger- 
trude, a village mason's wife, whose horizon extends no 
farther than the feudal baron and his little tenantry, has 
no higher ambition than to keep her husband sober and to 
bring up their children in the love of God. Her pleasures 
are as sorry as her griefs. But mean as is the picture, it is 
a symbol of the one great, overmastering fact of education; 
it is a demonstration that the true training of childhood 
radiates from motherhood, and should find its centre, no 
matter how widely it may be extended, in parental respon- 

chased, and on which he had attempted, on a large scale, the cultiva- 
tion of madder. Failing in this, and virtually tied to the estate by the 
large and expensive house which he had erected on it, he tried, with 
almost grotesque results, to convert his farm into a juvenile place-of- 
refuge. 

1 Miss Channing's abridgment (in translation) of this book pre- 
serves its spirit while avoiding the tedium and irrelevancy of Pes- 
talozzi's style. 



PESTALOZZI AND FROEBEL. 183 

sibility. This was Pestalozzi's supreme idea; this he 
strove for, for this he kept himself poor and mean, for this 
he lived his life as he did, a sacrifice to the orphaned and 
outcast, an aspiration to give them that which he felt was 
the one essential thing in human life, — love. 

This we must never lose sight of, for this is the Pesta- 
lozzian "system." Disfigured by imitators,^ smothered, 
even in the founder's own experience, by restless experi- 
ment and his unhappy lack of balance, formalized into a 
dry-as-dust method by petty minds, the inner aim subsisted, 
the aim to make fatherhood and motherhood the active cen- 
tre of education. Indeed, the chief fault of Pestalozzi's 
later teaching, wherein, as was pithily said, he succeeded 
chiefly in "mechanizing education," arose from his mis- 
taken belief that the whole process might be brought, by a 
proper system, within the four walls of the home. " The 
parents' teaching," he makes a peasant in Christoph und Elsa 
say,^ "is the kernel of wisdom, and the schoolmaster's 
business is only to make a husk over it." And again, in 
his own person, he declares,^ in the address delivered on 
his seventy-third birthday, " The only sure foundation on 
which we must build, for institutions for popular education, 
national culture, and the elevation of the poor, is the paren- 
tal heart, which, by means of the 'innocence, truth, power, 
and purity of its love, kindles in the children the belief in 
love." 

Long before this, he had written, in his Letters on Early 
Education : * " The mother is qualified, and qualified by the 

1 England especially, in the early part of the century, was liberally 
supplied with " Pestalozzian institutions" of a most dreary and 
profitless sort. 

2 Barnard, Pest, and Pest., Pt. II. 153 (Sdmmt. Schrift., Bd. 12). 
8 Barnard, Pest, and Pest., Pt. II. 178. 

4 Quoted by Quick, Ed. Bef., 356. 



184 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

Creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the de- 
velopment of her child; . . . and what is demanded of her 
is a thinldiig love. ... It is recorded that God opened 
the heavens to the patriarch of old and showed him a ladder 
leading thither. This ladder is let down to every descend- 
ant of Adam ; it is offered to thy child. But he must be 
taught to climb it. And let him not attempt it by the cold 
calculations of the head, or the mere impulses of the heart; 
but let all these powers combine, and the noble enterprise 
will be crowned with success. . . . Maternal love is the 
first agent in education. . . . Through it the child is led 
to love and trust his Creator and his Eedeemer." 

"It was," he says,^ referring to Leonard and Gertrude, 
" my first word to the heart of the poor and forsaken. It 
was my first word to the heart of those who stand in God's 
stead towards the poor and forsaken. It was my first word 
to the mothers of the country, and to the mother-heart 
which God gave them that they might be towards their 
own what no creature on earth can be in their stead." 

And we must never forget that this first word is his last 
word, and the word that he strives always to utter through 
his writings, through his fantastic teaching, and even in 
those last humiliating years when, no longer master of 
himself or of his house, he drove his old followers from 
him, and countenanced a teaching which was, indeed, a 
husk of his rich first-harvest. 

Leonard and Gertrude brought him fame and prediction 
of success as a novelist. Other things he wrote, many 
things he did, in these sad eighteen years; but this hard 
experience was preparation time only. Not until the age 
of fifty-five did his life really begin; the preceding thirty 
years of manhood were intellectually prenatal, the bitter 

1 Quoted by Von Kaumer, Gesch. dev Pad., II. 386. 



PESTALOZZI AND FROEBEL. 185 

gestation-term of genius. "For thirty years," he wrote ^ 
to Zschokke, " my life has been a desperate struggle against 
most frightful poverty. . . . Do you know that for thirty 
years I have wanted the bare necessities? Do you know 
that until now I have kept out of society, away from church, 
because I had neither clothes nor money to buy them? 
Zschokke, do you know that I am the laughing-stock of the 
passers-by because I look like a beggar? Do you know that 
more than a thousand times I have had to forego my dinner, 
and at noon, when the poorest even were sitting at table, I 
have been bitterly devouring a crust on the highway? 
Yes, Zschokke, and to-day even I am struggling with pain- 
ful poverty ; . . . and all this to come to the help of the 
poor through the triumph of my principles." 

Unnecessary pain, much of it; and, except as the bitter 
trial deepened the power of his love and capacity for self- 
sacrifice, impotent years. He himself recognized this. 
"Gray-haired, I was still a child, " he wrote to Gessner,^ re- 
ferring to the time of the French occupation of Switzerland; 
" I was not only deceived by every knave, I was hoodwinked 
by every fool, and believed in the good faith of any one who 
appeared before me and spoke fair words. Nevertheless, I 
knew the people and the sources of their savagery and 
"degradation, and I desired nothing more than that these 
sources be stopped and their evil effects arrested; and the 
' new men ' of Helvetia, ^ who were not content with so little, 
and who did not know the people, soon found that I was 
not suited to their use. These men, in their new position, 
like shipwrecked women, believed every straw to be a mast 

1 Quoted by Paroz, Hist. univ. de la Ped.^ 310. 

'■^ Wie Gertrud, etc. (Sdmmt Schrift., V. 10). See trans, in Barnard, 
Pest, and Pest., Pt. II. 187. 

3 The French officials who were trying to remodel Switzerland into 
the "Helvetian Republic." 



186 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

on which the republic might be rescued; but me, me they 
took for a straw not lit to sustain a cat. 

"Without knowing it, without wishing it, they did me 
good, more good than any men have ever done me. They 
restored me to myself and left me nothing, in the amaze- 
ment caused by their shipwreck, except to say, as I had 
said in the first days of their confusion, ' I will turn school- 
master.' For this I found confidence. I became a teacher. 
. . . Stanz had just burned down, and Legrand begged 
me to make this place of misery the first scene of my under- 
taking. I went ; I would have gone into the farthest 
clefts of the mountains to come nearer to my aim; and 
now, in truth, I did come nearer. But think of my posi- 
tion ! Alone, destitute of all tools of teaching, alone ! — 
superintendent, bursar, steward, and even maidservant, in 
a half-ruined house, — surrounded by ignorance, disease, 
and unwonted things of all kinds. The number of children 
increased, by degrees, to eighty; all of different ages, some 
of good origin, others from the ranks of beggary, and all, 
with a few exceptions, wholly ignorant. What a task! 
Imagine it; to educate these children. What a task! 

"I attempted it, and stood in their midst; I uttered vari- 
ous sounds and made them imitate them; whoever saw it 
was struck with the effect. Truly it was a meteor that 
flashes through the air and vanishes. No one understood 
its nature. I did not understand it myself. It was the 
result of a simple, psychological idea which had been re- 
vealed to my inward consciousness, but which I myself 
was far from clearly understanding." 

In this characteristic way does he describe this point in 
his life, this epoch from which dates his fame. "I will 
turn schoolmaster, " he said, and, standing before a beggarly 
rabble of orphans, he uttered sounds, knowing not why he 
uttered them. But, in an invisible and illimitable circle 



PESTALOZZI AND FROEBEL. 187 

around those beggar children sat the civilized world listen- 
ing to hear, through those aimless sylla])les, the Heaven- 
sent message which was to redeem education. 

The school at Stanz, fortunately for Pestalozzi, whose 
health was quite unequal to such hardship, was sliort-lived. 
The French again entered the town, the pupils were dis- 
persed, and Pestalozzi secured the enforced rest upon which 
his very life depended. 

Restored in body, he undertook primary teaching in the 
schools of Burgdorf, where his vagaries and his total unfit- 
ness for the duties of an instructor, judged by common 
standards, won him little esteem. Short experiences in 
independent teaching — fortunate at Burgdorf and unfortu- 
nate at Miinchen-Buchsee — were followed by his removal 
to Yverdun to establish there, in 1805, the famous institu- 
tion which grew to be less a school than a pedagogic pulpit, 
to which pilgrims from every corner of the world flocked 
to listen and be taught. 

The Yverdun school existed twenty years, and it was not 
until 1825, two years before Pestalozzi's death, that it 
went wholly to ruin, and he retired to Neuhof. But, every 
year, new and more bitter dissensions arose between him 
and his assistants; every year the institution drifted 
farther and farther away, not merely from harmony, but 
from its old educational ideals. As one or another of the 
assistants, each a specialist, gained a temporary ascendency, 
the teaching took on a mathematical hue, a geographical 
hue, or a linguistic hue, until, at last, it showed only the 
dull monotone of the routine schools of pre-Pestalozzian 
days. But meanwhile, and most fortunately, the spark of 
inspiration had been carried away from the atmosphere 
of the school itself into every part of Europe and even into 
America, there to kindle fires which no poisonous breath of 
dissension from Yverdun could extinguish. 



188 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

Perhaps there has never been a poorer teacher, of any 
fame, than Pestalozzi.^ Without steadiness, without pa- 
tience, without definite method, his schools, as schools, 
were shamefully inadequate. Whether at Stanz, where he 
taught, — using the word narrowly, — ■ no one except, reac- 
tively, himself; whether at Burgdorf, where he walked in 
pedagogic clouds, oblivious that he was veiling from the 
poor children upon whom he poured the torrent of his ideas 
the sun of understanding; whether, finally, at Yverdun, 
where, the flood of his incoherency exhausted, he kept his 
pupils in a noonday glare of publicity, and dried up finally 
the very springs of their nurture, — everywhere his teaching 
was a series of experiments, rather than a fixed and definite 
work. He subjected his boys to endless mental vivisec- 
tion. He was too eager for results, too enamoured of ex- 
perimentation, too inflamed with proselyting zeal, to spend 
much time in weighing his teaching or in calculating its 
effects.^ Add to this, that for the last forty years of his 

1 Says Krlisi, one of his earlier assistants (quoted by Compayre, 
Hist, de la Peel, Le^. XVIII. 371), " In the matter of ordinary acquire- 
ments and methods of school-teaching, Pestalozzi was inferior to any 
good village dominie. But he possessed something infinitely beyond 
that which any course of instruction, no matter how good, can give. 
He understood what is hidden from most teachers, — the human mind 
and the laws of its development and cultivation, the human heart and 
the means of quickening and ennobling it." 

2 "Pestalozzi's teaching," says Compayre (Hist, de la Fed., Leq. 
XVIII. 367), "was indeed a continual groping, an experiment ever 
newly begun. Ask him not for formulated ideas, definitely estab- 
lished methods. Always on the alert and in search of perfection, his 
extraordinary teaching-instinct was never satisfied. . . . His theories 
almost always followed, seldom preceded, his experiments. Intuitional 
rather than logical, he himself acknowledges that he went ahead with- 
out asking, whither ? . . . He never knew how to profit by others' 

, experiences. He never attained precision in his methods. He com- 
plained of not being understood and, truly, he was not," 



PESTALOZZI AND FROEBEL. 189 

life he scarcely opened a book, and purposely remained 
ignorant of what other teachers were striving to do, and 
it is easy to understand the failure of his schools regarded 
merely as institutions for instruction. His proudest title, 
he boasts, is that of schoolmaster. But he never deserved 
the name, even from his own standpoint. He was not 
fitted to grasp the petty, daily things of actual instruction. 
He was made for prophecy, not for drudgery ; he was a seer, 
not a schoolmaster. Like Bacon, he measured the eternal 
verities, but ignored the infinite little truths of which they 
are the sum. 

Even in the best days at Yverdun, we have proof enough 
that there was much confusion, much aimlessness, much 
parrot-work, much vain repetition of names and facts ar- 
ranged alphabetically, or tagged with mnemonic devices dear 
to Pestalozzi. But, on the other hand, there was great 
earnestness, unbounded enthusiasm, and a steady ethical 
aim in the methods used, crude and mistaken as those 
methods often were.^ The institution was essentially a 
moral one,^ and it was because of the emphasis of the moral 
side of education, it was because of Pestalozzi's insistence 
that boys must be made men first and scholars second, that 
Yverdun grew to be a shrine of pilgr linage. It was not 
what he taught or how he taught that attracted teachers 
from all over the world; it was the spirit in which he 

1 See Herbart's description of a visit to Pestalozzi's Burgdorf 
school, .in TJeher PestalozzV s neueste Schrift, etc. {Sdmmt. Werke, 
XL 47). 

'^ " I knew no other order, method, or art, but that which resulted 
naturally from my children's conviction of my love for them, nor did 
I care to know any other. Thus I subordinated the instruction of my 
children to a higher aim, which was to arouse and strengthen their 
best sentiments by the relations of every-day life as they existed 
between themselves and me." Quoted by De Guimps, Pestalozzi 
(Russeirs trans.), 16G. 



190 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

taught. These teachers went away from Yverdun not much 
wiser as to educational methods, but infinitely wiser as to 
educational ends. "The powerful, indefinable, stirring 
and uplifting effect produced by Pestalozzi when he spoke," 
says Froebel,^ "set one's soul on fire for a higher, nobler 
life, although he had not made clear or sure the exact way 
towards it, nor indicated the means whereby to attain it. 
Thus did the power and many-sidedness of the educational 
effort make up for deficiency in unity and comprehensive- 
ness ; and the love, the warmth, the stir of the whole, the 
human kindness and benevolence of it, replaced the want 
of clearness, depth, thoroughness, extent, perseverance, and 
steadiness." 

While Yverdun was the resort of kings and philoso- 
phers, while it was, for many years, the fashion to send one's 
children there, the institution was, none the less, the cul- 
mination and the counterpart of the beggar schools at 
Neuhof and Stanz, and the village peasant school at Burg- 
dorf ; the tender spirit which ministered to those outcasts 
was the same which at Yverdun kissed every child who 
came, took him by the hand, and, leading him into the 
midst of the pupils, said, "Boys, here is a new pupil; be 
kind to him, and remember that henceforth he is your 
brother! "2 

One searches in vain his letters to Gessner, which Pes- 
talozzi published under the title. How Gertrude teaches her 



'^ Auto., 79. Gesamm. pad. Schrift. (Lange), I. i, 97. 

2 Pestalozzi was a radical as thorough-going as Rousseau, and, with 
his aggressive philanthropy, would have forced the rich and the com- 
petent, could he have done so, to bring about the melioration of the 
poor and helpless. Therefore, had his fanaticism not emancipated 
children, we should still owe an immense debt to it for giving an early 
impulse towards the education and uplifting of the defective and 
degraded classes. 



PESTALOZZl AND FKOEBEL. 191 

Children, for clear notions of his educational scheme. He 
confesses his inability to formulate it, and avails himself 
of the expositions of his disciples, qualifying them, how- 
ever, with criticisms and elaborations that but increase our 
confusion.^ His fundamental classification is, in itself, a 
false one, bringing, as it does, all instruction under three 
heads, — Form, ^N'umber, and Language. It is easy to see 
into what pitfalls so illogical a division must lead. Form 
and number are, humanly speaking, realities. They are 
qualities inherent in things; they are tangible and abso- 
lute. Language, on the contrary, is extraneous and insub- 
stantial; it is but an arbitrary and varying sign of our 
impressions. Form and number are impersonal and inde- 
pendent of ourselves. Language is necessarily individual 
and always in mutation. 

It is therefore difficult, and it would be fruitless, to fol- 
low the plan of education which Pestalozzi constructs upon 
this threefold classification. The exposition of it upon 
which he spent so much labor, the pseudo -philosophy of 
which he was so fond, have now little value in themselves ; 
they have served their purpose, have done what harm as 
well as what good it was theirs to do. To many educa- 
tional monstrosities they have lent a respectable sponsor- 
ship ; ^ to many a teacher they have been as the Old Man 
of the Sea. But the spirit upon which they rested stands 
forth with ever greater distinction and power as the petti- 
nesses extraneous to it are sloughed off. 

1 For an exposition of his methods of teaching, see, besides the 
Wie Gertrud ihre Kinder lehrt, von Eaumer, Gesch. der Pad., II. 406 ; 
and Biber, Mem. of Pest. (In consulting Biber, care should be taken 
to separate his own notions from his description of Pestalozzi's 
methods.) 

2 See, e.g., an article by Miss Martineau (" Pestalozzi," etc.) given 
in LitteU's Living Age, LXX. 22. 



192 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

So vague was his system, even to Pestalozzi, that he 
failed to distinguish between the eternal and the transitory 
in his great work. To Gessner he wrote : ^ " If I look back 
and ask myself, What have I really done towards the 
progress of education? I find this : I have established the 
supreme principle of education in recognizing apperception 
as the absolute foundation of all knowledge; and have 
sought, by eliminating all individualities of teaching, the 
true essence of teaching through which the improvement of 
our species, by following nature, will be brought about. I 
find that I have resolved all education into three elementary 
principles " (meaning Form, Number, and Language), " and 
have determined the special principle through which it 
would be possible to bring all instruction absolutely under 
these three heads." 

In his New Year's address of 1809 he said:^ "What I 
seek is to elevate human nature to its highest, its noblest; 
and this I do through love. . . . All the capacities for 
intellect and art and knowledge which my nature holds, I 
take to be only means for the divine uplifting of the heart 
to love. . . . Love is the only, the eternal foundation of 
the training of our race to humanity." 

Alas for human blindness, from which not even genius 
is exempt! That threefold classification which Pestalozzi 
told Gessner had been established firmly, has long since 
crumbled away. That vague "uplifting" which, in his 
New Year's address he said, "I seek," and which he died 
seeking, he had found and started on its blessed mission 
to the world years before, among the wretched waifs to 
whose souls and bodies he ministered at Stanz. 

But his false classification, his mistaken, details of 



1 Wis Gertrud, etc. (Sdmmt. Schrift., Bd. V. 194). 
^ Barnard, Pest, and Pest., Part II. 176. 



PESTALOZZI AND FKOEBEL. 193 

method, could not wholly hide his real, eternal principles 
even from his contemporaries; through the confusion of his 
writings they stood forth; through the disorder and vacil- 
lation, the miserable quarrelling at Yverdun, they shone 
like stars. The atmosphere of his school, the spirit of his 
writings, was that of love, of self -forgetting, of high aspira- 
tion. And his instruction, at its best, was worthy of these 
virtues. It Avas thorough, it was individual, it was, in the 
highest sense, religious; it was quickening to the moral 
as well as to the intellectual nature of the child; it was 
gauged to his capacity, it was a logical unfolding,^ not a 
system of instruction. And it was based psychologically 
upon Apperception. Apperception, feeble paraphrase 
though it be, is the least unsatisfactory translation of that 
key-word, Anschauung, around which the pedagogy of both 
Pestalozzi and Froebel revolves. Anschauung may be defined 
as a quickening perception, a perception that registers itself 
permanently upon our inner consciousness, and produces 
a real and lasting change in our personality. As the 
younger Fichte expresses it:^ "Only that can become the 
true and intellectual property of the child and of the man, 
which he has thought through and through, and in free per- 
ceptive activity brought forth out of himself." It is from 
this necessity for Anschauung that arises the doctrine of 
self-activity which is fundamental to the teaching of Pesta- 

1 " ' He seeks to supply all operations of the mind with either data 
or heads (Bubriken) or main ideas.' (Fischer.) That is to say: he 
seeks in the entire world of art and nature the fundamental points, 
the Anschauung sweisen^ the fixed facts which, through their certainty 
and universality, can be used as a fruitful means of lightening the 
acquisition and consideration of many secondary and related objects." 
— Wie Gertnid, etc. (Sdmmt. Schrift., V. 43). 

2 The National Education demanded by the Age (trans, by Emily 
Mayer); Barnard, Ki^id. and Child Culture, 321. 



194 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

lozzi, and which, as we shall see, is pre-eminent with Froe- 
bel. It is the now familiar doctrine that, to learn, the child 
must act, must re-create; and this he must do harmoniously 
with his inner nature, rhythmically with external nature, 
and interdependently with humanity. Upon this doctrine 
rest modern methods of teaching. 

*'The education acquired from Pestalozzi," writes Ma- 
dame de Stael, in De V allemagne,'^ "gives every man, no 
matter what his station, a foundation upon which he can 
erect, at will, the poor man's hut or palaces for kings." 

Upon this foundation the educational systems of Ger- 
many, of Scandinavia, of Switzerland, built themselves up. 
More than two hundred years earlier, Luther and Comenius 
had given the impulse to the German principalities, but it 
was Pestalozzi who gave the spirit that unified and quick- 
ened the older impulse; from the unity and enthusiasm of 
the education which he gave to the German states arose 
Germany herself. We in America followed, as was natural, 
the models and ideals that England gave us. Upon 
these we established that system of public education which 
has been the preservative of the spirit brought across 
the ocean by the picked men who founded the Republic. 
To-day we have new problems before us, to which these old 
standards are inadequate, for which these old methods do 
not suffice. Fortunately, the spirit of German education 
has come to us, and is rapidly transforming ours to meet 
the grave questions that confront us. Back of that spirit 
is the inspiration of Pestalozzi; but back of him is the 
spirit of Eousseau and of that French nation which in so 
many vital advances of civilization has been the prophet of 
truth, but which in so few has been the recognized and 
patient apostle. 

So completely has the memory of him vanished, that it is 

1 1. 160. 



PESTALOZZI AND FKOEBEL. 196 

difficult to-day to realize the vogue of Pestalozzi. His 
name for many years was alike the spark of inspiration and 
the catch-penny candle of charlatanism. Governments vied 
with one another in the decreeing of so-called Pestalozzian 
reforms and in the nursing of self-styled Pestalozzian re- 
formers. And this was natural; it was necessary; it was 
a part of the appointed work of fanaticism. The sluggish 
world was beginning to ponder (foolishly in the main), 
to talk (wildly as a rule), to experiment (aimlessly in 
the majority of cases), upon educational problems; but 
enough that it did talk and ponder and experiment. The 
foolishness and aimlessness were in time to fritter them- 
selves away, leaving a solid residuum of advance towards 
fuller knowledge of educational ends. 

To one of the more rational Pestalozzian schools kept at 
Prankfort by a certain Herr Griiner, there came by chance, 
in 1805, a young man of twenty-three who had journeyed 
from his native Thuringia to study in the city. His name 
was Friedrich Proebel. He had had a desultory youth, 
now as forester's assistant, again as a special student at 
Jena, later as a land steward, and he had made his way to 
Frankfort in order to add to his already varied, though 
superficial, knowledge a smattering of architecture.^ Grii- 
ner, recognizing his teaching faculty, offered him a position 
in the Pestalozzian school; and, from the moment when 
his class confronted him, Froebel's career was determined. 
With scarcely an interruption, the remaining forty-seven 
years of his life were devoted to pedagogic work. 

Twice during these years did he visit Yverdun; and, 
while he found much to criticise, while he failed to see that 
Pestalozzi had attained the eternal principle of "Unity," 

1 For the details of Froebel's life, see his Autobiography ; Fran von 
Marenholz-Bulow, Eeminiscences ; Schmidt, Gesch. der rddagogik, 
IV. 238 ; and Bowen, Froebel. 



196 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

still he gained, and himself confesses that he gained, in- 
spiration there that determined in great measure the direc- 
tion of his efforts. 

One is forced, in justice to both, to place these two 
leaders, this master and his pupil, in contrast, so persis- 
tently and wrongly have their adherents put them in oppo- 
sition. It is true their natures were opposed; their personal 
equations contained few like quantities; but the high re- 
sults for which they strove were in every way similar. 
The special forms of their endeavor differed, but the funda- 
mental forms, the formulae, were identical. Each made 
special application of his theories: Pestalozzi to the neg- 
lected infants of mankind, — the outcast, the beggared, the 
orphaned; Froebel to the abused infants of men, — the spirit- 
ually outcast, the mentally beggared, the sympathetically 
orphaned. But under the aim of each, under the method 
of each, under the immediate educational object of each, lay 
the eternal principle of the other, that education, be it for 
rich or poor, for the intellectually high or the morally low, 
must rest upon and grow out of love. 

Were any proof needed of the universality of this princi- 
ple, the opposite ways by which the conviction of it was 
forced upon these two men would serve as minor evidence. 
Their childhood experiences, those experiences which give 
the great moral biases to us all, were antipodal. Pesta- 
lozzi, as we have seen, losing his father in infancy, was 
brought up by tender and careful women, who shielded him 
too closely. Froebel, on the other hand, left motherless 
and at the mercy of a hateful stepmother, received what 
slight care was vouchsafed him from men, all of them, ex- 
cept an uncle with whom he spent four happy boyhood 
years, men of a stern, unsympathetic sort. Yet Froebel, 
to whom the blessing was unknown, was convinced, equally 
with Pestalozzi, that mother-love is the true basis of educa- 



PESTALOZZI AND FROEBEL. 197 

tion. Frau von Marenholz, his most appreciative disciple, 
testifies ^ that Troebel again and again said, in substance : 
"The destiny of nations lies far more in the hands of 
women — the mothers — than in the possessors of power, 
or of those innovators who for the most part do not under- 
stand themselves. We must train women, who are the 
educators of the human race, else the new generation can- 
not accomplish its task." "This," she says, "was almost 
always the sum of his discourse." 

But, whether by education or by nature, the mind of 
Froebel was more masculine than that of Pestalozzi. It 
was well-ordered and disciplined. It reached its convic- 
tions less by divine impulse and more by prosaic reason. 
Both were pious, but Pestalozzi' s possessed the piety of 
faith, while Froebel's held that of conviction. We may 
safely make the old distinction between these two men, that 
Pestalozzi had genius, and Froebel talent; but the small fund 
of the latter, by qualities of orderliness and mental thrift, 
made greater profit than the profuse and scattered intellect- 
ual wealth of the former. Such mistakes and abortive 
struggles as those of Pestalozzi's first fifty years would have 
been impossible to the clearer, less feverish mind of Froe- 
bel; such incoherency as was inseparable from the Swiss 
reformer was unknown to the more restricted intellect of 
the German, whose ideas suffer from fancy rather than ex- 
uberance ; ^ such wretched quarrels as those at Yverdun 
would have been impossible in the mild atmosphere of 
Froebel's schools, where the enthusiasm was never of the 
gusty sort that fans the heat of fervor into the fiames of 
passion. " If I were not afraid of being taken for an idiot 



1 Marenholz-Bulow's Beminiscences (Mann's trans.), Ch. I. 4. 

2 Froebel's style, however, is more vague and rambling than even 
Pestalozzi's. 



198 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

or an escaped lunatic, " writes Froebel, ^ " I would run bare- 
foot from one end of Germany to the other and cry aloud 
to all men." Pestalozzi would have run barefoot, and 
would have gloried in the reputation of insanity : such was 
the difference between them. 

Pestalozzi, the real genius, was unique; he was a spo- 
radic growth, a ferment sent to leaven the doughish lump of 
humanity. Froebel, on the contrary, was merely a repre- 
sentative of a well-defined class ; he was a type — a strongly 
marked type — of that philosophical spirit which did so 
much towards the welding of G-ermany after her humilia- 
tion by Nax^oleon. Practical yet dreamy, scientific yet 
credulous, analytic yet mystical, filled with fancies, sym- 
bols, extravagancies, exuberant in thought and speech, the 
newborn German nation was like a child, with a child's 
surplus of strength, a child's ill-balanced imagination, a 
child's elastic vision, limited to self, yet with sudden 
illuminating glimpses into eternity. Froebel was the em- 
bodiment of this Zeitgeist, this exaggeration of yearning, 
this overestimate of self-promise, this glamour of existence, 
which characterized the Germany of sixty years ago. If 
we divorce him from his striking nationality, we lose the 
key to Froebel 's aims. We lose, too, the explanation of 
the sad havoc which a too literal translation of his figura- 
tive and incomplete demonstrations has wrought. 

Froebel was first of all a German striving for the redemp- 
tion of Germany. Inspired by Pestalozzi and gifted with 
a talent for the probing of first principles, he sought to 
base German unity upon spiritual unity, upon the omnipo- 
tent spirit of unity in nature. This principle of universal 
harmony he identifies rightly with the all-pervading spirit 

1 To Frau Schmidt, January, 1847. See Micliaelis-Moore, FroeheVs 
Leu 146. 



PESTALOZZI AND FROEBEL. 199 

of love. As all natural phenomena are the outward mani- 
festations of the striving of all things towards unity, so 
all ethical phenomena are the outward signs of the inner 
striving of the soul towards spiritual unity, towards har- 
mony with God. The task of education, therefore, is to 
help the soul in this aspiration towards unity with God ^ 
and with His manifestation of Himself in nature. "We 
must render perceptible to the child the unity of the 
world, absolute existence, the world within; and these in an 
earthly, human, childlike, intelligible fashion. Unity must 
be perceived in variety, absolute existence in phenomena, 
harmony in melody, the soul in the body, — in a word 
all things in all things, — and this through many-sided, 
harmoniously-active life and work." -^ In these words does 
Froebel sum up his principles. Pestalozzi's aim was no 
lower, and the educational tool of both these men was that 
untranslatable Anschauung, that making of knowledge a 
part and parcel of one's very being, that mental and spirit- 
ual digestion of phenomena. Froebel, however, of an era 
somewhat later than that of Pestalozzi, of a receptive habit 
of mind, reflecting, as has been said, the extraordinary 
German spirit of the dawning nineteenth century, and 
assimilating the doctrines of that body of German philoso- 
phers whose influence upon educational growth was so great, 



1 "Genuine and true, living religion, reliable in danger and strug- 
gles, in times of oppression and need, in joy and pleasure, must come 
to man in his infancy ; for the Divine Spirit that lives and is manifest 
in the finite, in man, has an early though dim feeling of its divine 
origin ; and this vague sentiment, this exceedingly misty feeling, 
should be fostered, strengthened, nurtured, and, later on, raised into 
full consciousness, into clear apprehension." — Ed. of Man (Hail- 
mann), 25. FroebeVs gesamm. pad. Schrift. (Lange), I. 2, 18. 

2 Letter to Frau Schmidt, December, 1840. See Michaelis-Moore, 
FroebeVs Let., 57. 



200 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

spiritualized a doctrine which, with Pestalozzi, remained 
dangerously near materialism. Pestalozzi aimed to make, 
by his educational process, the outward world a possession 
of the inward man, to make the "outer, inner." Froebel 
went further than this, and, not satisfied with making the 
"outer, inner," aspired also to make the "inner, outer ";^ 
that is, he aspired not only to bring the world of phenom- 
ena into relationship with man^ but also to spiritualize 
material phenomena through, man. 

It is this endeavor which lies at the bottom of his kinder- 
garten plays; but it is this aspiration, also, which led him 
into extravagances of subtlety in explaining his educational 
theories. " I know no more decided enemy of materialism 
than Froebel," declares his editor, Lange.^ True; but, in 
his anxiety to escape materialism, he was betrayed into 
many absurdities concerning the effect of material upon 
spiritual phenomena. He would, and did, make the child 
self -expansive by making him self-active. But, not satis- 
fied with a simple explanation of this beautiful fact, he 
must needs delve for far-fetched and sometimes grotesque 
causes for simple effects — effects which are the result, 
merely, of the satisfaction of energy, of the joy of existence, 
or, to use nis own expression, of the attainment of unity. 
Without being a psychologist, he gave a psychologic twist 
to all his theories, and complacently esteemed his will-o'- 
the-wisps of fancy to be beacon-lights of progress. One 

1 " . . . This ' rendering of the inner outer,' is the great Froebehan 
doctrine of creativeness. It is the practical apphcation of the princi- 
ple of self -activity, and, together with the doctrines of continuity and 
connectedness^ it forms the true heart of Froebel's system. It gives 
their very life-blood to all the songs and games ; and it is the living 
principle in all the occupations, which without it are mere sticks and 
stones, and bits of paper." — Bowen, Froebel, III. 64. 

2 Barnard, Kind, and Child Culture, 70. 



PESTALOZZl AND FROEBEL. 201 

needs but to study his Italian contemporary, E-osmini, who 
was, indeed, a profound psychologist, and whose theories 
were parallel to Froebel's,^ to perceive the shallowness of 
Froebel's transcendentalism.^ 

This foible of his would be of no consequence were it not 
that these unsound doctrines have survived and form the 
whole gospel of many of his disciples, while the deep and 
everlasting doctrine of their master is forgotten or over- 
looked. Seldom has a man been at once so fortunate and so 
unfortunate in his friends. A few — notably Middendorf 
and Frau von Marenholz-Biilow — have not only interpreted 
him, but have actually helped him to understand himself. 
Too many of them, however, have seized upon that in him 
which was most fantastic, most transitory, most purely local, 
and have tried to limit him to their elaborations and per- 
versions of these accidental things. Through their mistaken 
activity, they have succeeded in restricting him to the lesser 
phase of his work, the kindergarten, and have, in too many 
instances, so materialized his spirit as to convert it into 
a pedagogic scarecrow, to excite laughter and derision. 
Froebel's fancies have too often usurped the place which 
belongs to his truths. The true Froebel saw "in every 
child the possibility of a perfect man."^ He desired (to 
again use his own words) * "to educate men whose feet shall 
stand on God's earth, rooted fast in nature, while their 

1 Compare, e.g., the second and third chapters of the Education of 
Man with Rosmini's Method in Education. 

2 Herbart, too, whom I have neglected only because he is of that 
body of German philosophers which it has been necessary to exclude 
from the plan of this outline, founds his pedagogics upon a broad and 
serious philosophy in contrast with which Froebel's psychological 
fancies seem childish indeed. 

3 Marenholz-Biilow, Bern., Ch. II. 21. 

^ Auto.., p. 63. Froebels Gesamni. pad. Schrift. (Lange), I. i, 83. 



202 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

head towers up to heaven and reads its secrets with steady 
gaze, whose heart shall embrace both earth and heaven, 
shall enjoy the life of earth and nature with all its wealth 
of forms, and at the same time shall recognize the purity 
and peace of heaven, that unites in its love God's earth 
with God's heaven." The true Froebel, in this high pur- 
suit, regards the kindergarten as a first step. "Play," he 
says,^ "is the first means of development in the human 
mind, its first effort to make acquaintance with the outward 
world, to collect outward experiences from things and 
facts, and to exercise the powers of body and mind." 
Therefore he uses play, not only to stimulate the budding 
activities, but to measure and direct the child's individu- 
ality.^ "He avails himself of a hitherto unused force and, 
by harnessing it, vastly increases its power for good. At 
the same time he leads the child, necessarily, from outer 
darkness of mental and spiritual neglect, into an atmos- 
phere of sympathy and understanding, bringing to bear 
upon him, thereby, the power of love; and, thirdly, by 
magnifying the individuality of little children, he increases, 
reflectively, the parental consciousness of responsibility.^ 



1 Marenholz-Biilow, Bern., Ch. VI. 67. 

•■2 " Child's play strengthens the powers both of the soul and of the 
body, provided we know how to make the first self -occupation of a 
child a freely active, that is, a creative or a productive, one." — Maren- 
holz-BUlow, Bern., Ch. XI. 156. 

"Up till now there has been no means of ascertaining a man's 
vocation. To provide such a means is my great care, and is the cause 
of my devotion to the elaboration of my game system. It is indeed 
the inmost secret aim I have had in view ; and when once it is gen- 
erally acknowledged, there will begin a new era for the human race." 
— Letter to Frau Schmidt, September, 1843. See Michaelis-Moore, 
FroebeVs Let., 131. 

'^ On this must depend the future, not only of education, but of 
civilization itself. We are now at such a point of material advance- 



PESTALOZZI AND FROEBEL. 203 

The false Froebel, he who, unfortunately, is most com- 
monly preached, is a mechanician, a deviser of graded 
playthings, a composer of indifferent verses, in which we 
are asked to see a profound pedagogical system. The play- 
things, as types, are good; the songs, as suggestions, are 
worthy of use; but they should remain types and models. 
Every year in history, every mile in geography, takes chil- 
dren farther away from their literal use. Every child de- 
mands, if not new Eroebelian Gifts, at least a new order in 
their use; and for every child and every group of children 
there must be devised new songs, new games, new "occu- 
pations." No one could say this more strongly than did 
Froebel himself in the early days of the kindergarten. It 
was only when, intoxicated by the success of his Gifts, and 
flattered by the extravagances of his followers, that he forgot 
that the playthings themselves were transitory, and only the 
principles which had led him to produce them were eternal. 
It was then that he lost hold upon the substance of his 
doctrines, and, grasping these shadows, these toys and 
rhymes, believed that through them would come the regen- 
eration of the world. 

Singularly enough, there came with this hardening of his 
free spirit into the mould of mechanical routine a change 
of base similar to that which occurred in the case of Pesta- 
lozzi. The old Swiss, in his last, sad years, came wholly 
under the sway of Schmidt, whom Michelet calls the 
" cipherer, " ^ and who did, indeed, reduce the Pestalozzian 

ment and complexity, the opportunities and incitements towards evil, 
as well as towards good, have so greatly multiplied, that only in an 
increased sense of parental duty is there possibility of a spiritual 
advance in any degree equal to our material progress. Fortunately, 
this sense of responsibility seems to be rapidly growing. 

1 "Three walls grow up around Pestalozzi. Formalism in three 
shapes buries him and seals his tomb. The cipherer, Schmidt, 



204 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

spirit to a kind of mathematical legerdemain. Eroebel, 
too, seemed in his last years, as the development of the 
Gifts bears witness, to lay more and more stress upon 
mathematics. Already, in the Education of Man, he had 
found a mathematical demonstration or verification of relig- 
ion,^ and, in 1847, writing to Miss Howe, he says:^ "Since 
order, measure, rhythm, form, size, number, ratio, etc., are 
on all sides visible and audible, — nay, even they may 
often also be touched and tasted, — it seems as if everything 
were pointing to mathematics as the one true way and the 
one true science of order and knowledge, and, so to speak, 
the central point of all true perceptions of things." So far 
towards mechanical ization did his increasing worship of the 
baggage of his pedagogics carry him. Into far worse depths 
has a slavish imitation of this baggage-worship led some 
of his disciples. 

A few, however, have kept themselves on the high plane 
of the true Froebel. Chief among these is the Baroness von 
Marenholz-Biilow. In her writings and in his own book, 
the Education of Man, the real pedagogic preacher appears, 
not the narrow being to whom the paraphernalia of the kin- 
dergarten are all-important, but the great follower of Pesta- 
lozzi, who knew how to shape the vague aspirations, to 
spiritualize the earthy methods, of the Swiss reformer. 

The true Froebel says: "The representation of the in- 



becoraes the master ; thereafter figuring and no longer observation. 
The German, Niederer, methodical of mind, complicates, with abstruse 
formulas, rigs up in German dress, the simple, virile ideas of his 
master, transforming him into a Jena doctor. 

"But, worst of all, comes the fatal influence of a reaction to the 
past. It was reverted to through grammar, through the language- 
teaching inflicted upon little children." — Michelet, Nos fils^ 234. 

1 Ed. of 3Ian (Hailmann), 205. 

2 See Michaelis-Moore, FroebeVs Let., 254. 



PESTALOZZI AND FKOEBEL. 205 

finite in the finite, of the eternal in the temporal, of the 
celestial in the terrestrial, of the divine in and through 
man, in the life of man by the nursing of his originally 
divine nature, confronts us unmistakably on every side as 
the only object, the aim of all education, in all instruction 
and training." ^ 

"All true education in training and instruction should, 
therefore, at every moment, in every demand and regula- 
tion, be simultaneously double-sided — giving and taking, 
uniting and dividing, prescribing and following, active and 
passive, positive yet giving scope, firm and yielding; and 
the pupil should be similarly conditioned : but between 
the two, between educator and pupil, between request and 
obedience, there should invisibly rule a third something 
to which teacher and pupil are equally subject. This third 
something is the right, the best. " ^ 

Thus does Froebel summarize the principles of modern 
education, principles that began with civilization, that 
Pestalozzi, for the thousandth time, rediscovered and 
quickened, that Froebel, imbibing, put in order and made 
available. 

It is still too soon to predict the ultimate effect of the 
movement in education which, so far as this country is con- 
cerned, began with Froebel. We who are in the midst of 
the slow revolution can measure neither its magnitude nor 
its results. By it the last serf of civilization, the child, is 
being made free, and is taking his place in the scheme of 
the universe as a great, if not the greatest, factor of human 
progress. By it and through him, man and woman are 
learning the true significance of life: — 



'^ Ed. of Man (Hailmann), 16. 

'^Ed. of Man (Hailmann), 14. Froebels Gesamm. pad. Schrift. 
(Lange), I. 2, 10. 



206 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

" Come let us live with our children : then will the life 
of our children bring us peace and joy, then shall we begin 
to grow wise, to be Avise ! " ^ 

^ Ed. of Man (Hailmann), 89. Froebels Gesmm. pad. Schrift. 
(Lange), I. 2, 60. (See the whole of this § 47.) 



WOMEN IN EDUCATION. 207 



CHAPTER IX. 

WOMEN IN EDUCATION. 

Education leads to and from the Family : the Home is 
ITS Unit. 

A new power in education ; ITS GENESIS ; WOMEN IN ENGLAND ; IN 
GERMANY ; IN FRANCE ; THE WOMEN WRITERS ] ROUSSEAU's INFLU- 
ENCE ; SOPHIE ; MADAME DE GENLIS ; MADAME NECKER ; MADAME 
DE STAEL ; MADAME NECKER DE SAUSSURE ; " PROGRESSIVE EDU- 
CATION " ; MADAME GUIZOT ; ENGLISH WRITERS ; GERMAN KINDER- 
GARTNERS ; OTHER KINDERGARTNERS ; THE EFFECT OF THE WOMEN 
EDUCATIONISTS ; EXPANSION OF EDUCATION J CHILD-STUDY J THE 
PRESENT STATUS OF EDUCATION. 

Between Eousseau, educating his £mile by passive 
watchfulness and hidden negation, and Pestalozzi, hurrying 
his pupils forward by force of enthusiasm and the incite- 
ment of association, nearly fifty years intervened. The 
half-century that saw this essential change of attitude, and 
made the general acceptance of Pestalozzianism possible, 
witnessed the rise of a new and indispensable force in edu- 
cation, — that of women. Hannah More had said,^ in 
stately irony : " The rights of men have been discussed till 
we are somewhat wearied with the discussion. To these 
have been opposed, as the next stage in the progress of 
illumination, and with more presumption than prudence, 

1 Wo7'ks, IV. 100. Her Strictures on the 3Iodern System of F,emale 
Education, from which this is extracted, is, however, very lively, read- 
able, and, in many respects, full of good sense. 



208 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

the rights of woman. It follows, according to the natural 
progression of human things, that the next influx of that 
irradiation which our enlighteners are pouring in upon us 
will illuminate the world with grave descants on the rights 
of youth, the rights of children, the rights of babies ! " The 
"progress of illumination," despite those gentlewomen of 
whom "Mrs." More is so excellent a type, had gone on, had 
emphasized, not alone the rights, but also the real duties 
of women, and had called the attention of the civilized 
world to the fact that, for its own safety, it must pay more 
heed to those rights upon which it had for so many years 
trampled, the rights of the youth, of the child, and of the 
infant. 

Again we must go to "France to see the genesis of the 
new force. It is true that both in Germany and in England 
a home-life more genuine than that of France had for a 
long time existed; it is true, too, that in Germany the in- 
fluence of Comenius and Luther had produced a system of 
education much more modern than was elsewhere known. ^ 
But the German woman, subordinate as she was, could not 
be a force in civilization until, by the Froebelian movement, 
she should be exalted into a sort of genius of education; 
and the English tradition was so wedded to the humanities, 
the tutor and the endowed school were such sacred and 
impregnable institutions, that the Englishwoman failed to 
utilize the enormous uplifting impulse that could have been 
given by a better home-life. 

The position of the Frenchwoman was unique. For two 
hundred years she had been the controlling power in France. 
During the seventeenth century the centripetal tendency of 
French society steadily transformed the tyranny of a royal 
house into that of a city. Paris grew to be the acknowl- 

1 See Barnard, Nat. Ed. in Europe, 17 to 340. 



WOMEN IN EDUCATION. 209 

edged despot of France; but the x^olitics, the social life, 
the literature, the art of Paris came, at the same time, 
under the indirect but absolute dictation of the women. 
The wife, the mother, the mistress, ruled Paris as Paris 
ruled France, capriciously and selfishly, but from the 
aesthetic and intellectual standpoint, fairly well. Their 
rule showed all the advantages, as well as the enormous 
defects, of centralization. Whether to its ultimate good 
or not, France was given by this concentration of 
its intellectual life, an impetus towards higher civiliza- 
tion that, even to-day, invests her with a certain leader- 
ship. 

In the eighteenth century, the rule of the Frenchwoman 
was even greater than in the seventeenth, but this increased 
dominion had been gained at a fearful cost. The power 
that she wielded in the earlier century was that of a Madame 
de Maintenon; in the later, it was that of a Pompadour. 
From the gallantry of the age of Louis XV. had faded all 
remembrance of chivalry, and into it the refining influence 
of democracy had not yet entered. An Oriental brutality 
in its intrigue had distorted the relations of its men and 
women, had alienated the latter from their children, and 
threatened, by this estrangement, to degrade itself into 
utter license. Materialism and cynicism seemed in full 
possession until out of chaos came Chaos transfigured in 
the person of Jean- Jacques, morbidly preaching virtue, and 
turning frenzied license into an equal extravagance of sen- 
timentalism. After him came the Kevolution, with its 
sudden vision of Hades and its swallowing therein of social 
parasites. Adversity brought parents and children for the 
first time together, making them drink in common from the 
bitter cup of disobedience. There appeared, under these 
conditions, a new species of femme d'esprit, the mother 
preaching motherhood to her sex. Kousseau had incited 



210 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

women to suckle their children, even in the ball-room, to 
live with them, even to the point of making the poor babies 
share the mothers' dissipations. He had led what one 
might call an orgy of domesticity. But these women 
preachers who followed him sobered this mad motherhood 
into one approaching wisdom and unselfishness. 

These female evangelists of true education were none of 
them, if we except Madame de Stael, great women. It 
was Proudhon who said : " Whenever, in literature, genius, 
busied with other things, happens to retire, and the femi- 
nine element takes the ascendant, then appear the second- 
rate writers." Certainly, in so far as it is a question of the 
literature of education, he is right. Genius retired with 
Kousseau; after him appeared a host of writers, many of 
them women, who wrote voluminously upon education; 
but all these women, and all these men indeed, excepting 
Pestalozzi, were second-ra,te. What made the rapid ad- 
vance in educational ideas was not these female writers; 
it was the " eternal feminine " ^ asserting itself in new ways, 
and slowly broadening its dominion downward from man 
adult to man adolescent. 

Eousseau leading — or following — the march of events, 
helped to make this new position tenable; but one could 
hardly have expected him to take a rational view of woman 
or of her education. The Sophie ^ whom he trains to be the 
complement of fimile is not an actuality; she is not even 
lifelike; she is simply an incident in a masculine career. 
Indeed, he so far sacrifices artistic proportion and insults 

1 ^^ Das Ewig-Weibliche.''^ See Bayard Taylor, Goethe'' s Faust, XL 
Note 194. 

2 Sophie^ ou la femme, is the sub-title of the fifth book of J^mile. 
" Sophie must be such a woman as Emile is a man," Rousseau declares 
(J^mile, Liv. V. 409) ; but he fails dismally in his attempt to fulfil 
this opening condition. 



WOMEN IN EDUCATION. 211 

his own doctrines as to make her immoral.^ "The first and 
most important quality in woman/' Eousseau says,^ "is 
sweetness. Made to obey a being so imperfect, often so 
full of vice as man, she must early learn to suffer uncom- 
plainingly even injustice and wrong-doing from her hus- 
band. . . . Sharpness and upbraiding serve no end except 
to multiply the sins and ill-doing of the husband." But 
to this invertebrate creature he would commit the early 
education of children, that " first education which, " he 
rightly says,^ "is the most important, and which belongs, 
without question, to women." It was in the mother-heart,* 
however, not in the wife-heart, that the words of Rousseau 
found lodging, and in a degree we may date from him the 
rise of woman into her true position. 

The first of the distinctly labelled female "education- 
ists " of the new time was that versatile and volatile person, 
Madame de Genlis. At heart she was of the old regime, 
in which the happy days of her youth had been spent. She 
loved that silly, puerile life, and describes it^ with such 
frankness of affection that we begin to wonder if the Revo- 
lution did not swallow up some old world quite alien to 
ours. But she was French and, therefore, intellectually 
flexible, and, when the change came, she quickly adapted 
herself to the new ideas. Borrowing Rousseau's principles, 
— which, being pernicious, were clearly contraband, — she 
gave them a bourgeois royalist stamp, tried them upon her 
pupils, the children of Philippe Egalite,^ and found them, 

1 In lEmile et Sophie, a weak and worthless sequel to Emile. 

2 jSmile, Liv. V. 426. 

8 ^mile, Liv. I. 6 (note). 

* See ante, p. 184. (Quot. from von Raumer.) 

5 In her niemoh's. See, e.g., her description, con amove, of the 
fooUsh pranks of her early married life. 

For adequate sketches of Madame de Genlis, see Ste.-Beuve, Cans, 
du Lundi, III. 15 ; and Dobson, Four Frenchwomen. 



212 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

thus remodelled, to be perfection. The more she profited by 
the Citizen of Geneva, the more loudly she decried him ; ^ 
but her court edition of Emile was not a bad one ; she was 
a woman determined and successful in making a stir in the 
world ; and so she did much towards spreading the fashion 
of maternal responsibility. 

Her method of training was not profound; neither was 
it very consistent. It was distinctly in advance of the 
ordinary systems of her day, however, and it succeeded in 
making a tolerable compromise between the impossible 
naturalism of Rousseau and that vapid frivolity in educa- 
tion which was the offspring of the time. She isolated her 
ideal pupils, her Adele and Theodore, but she did not for- 
get, as did Jean- Jacques, to isolate their parents too.^ 

What most astonishes one in Madame de Genlis is her 
literary range and fecundity. She was fatally ready with 
her pen, and her plays, her moral disquisitions, as well as 
her pedagogic romance, AdUe et Theodore, are stamped 
with the garrulity of a half -educated woman too busy, too 

1 " Not to pay one's tutor, not to teach the catechism, not to deny 
children, not to trouble one's self about them ; that is the sum of 
J.-J. Rousseau's principles." See the v^ry interesting note (8) at the 
end of the 83d Vol. {La Religion) of the (Euv. de Madame de 
Genlis. 

2 Le baron d' Almane and his wife really exile themselves from Paris, 
with their two children (aged six and seven years), until Adele's 
entrance into society. In their letters to friends and relatives are 
developed Madame de Genlis's views on education. As to her ideal 
of female education, see Adele et Theodore (Paris, 1825), T. IV. 50 
et seq., and the summing up on p. 119: "Ne croyez pas, . . . que 
mon projet soit de rendre Adele savante. ... Je ne pretends que 
lui donner une connoisance tres-superficielle de toutes ces choses, 
qui puisse servir quelque fois a son amusement, la mettre en 6tat 
d'Scouter sans ennui son pere, son frere, ou son mari ; . . . et la 
preserver d'une infinite de petits pr^jug^s que donne n§cessairement 
1' ignorance." 



WOMEN IN EDUCATION. 213 

vain, and too facile to take pains. Madame Guizot said ^ 
of her that "she always wrote well and never better." 

A person of the court, without being in a bad sense a 
courtier ; prodigiously accomplished, as the times went, but 
fully sensible of the vanity of her education; a prophet to the 
new no less than an authority to the old order of things, — 
Madame de Genlis was a factor of importance in the growth 
of education. While her avowed enmity to Eousseau made 
her acceptable to the conservative element, her adoption of 
his principles attached her to the radicals in education. 
Her pupils, the Orleans children, dull as was to be expected, 
seem neither to have chilled her enthusiasm nor to have 
awed her into sparing them a wholesome discipline. In 
the true scientific spirit, she made their very defects serve 
the ends of experimentation. Altogether she is an inter- 
esting and characteristic figure of the transition time in 
France. 

Quite different from her were the three Necker women, 
two of whom fill so large a space in the history of the re- 
construction of France. These women were distinctly 
hourgeoise. They may be taken as types of the new society 
that supplanted the old, but they were not of the bourgeoisie 
of Paris; they belonged essentially to Geneva, where 
theocracy had created a middle class far more advanced, 
intellectually, and far broader in its sympathies than the 
mercantile middle-class of the Capital. Madame Necker, 
perhaps no more clever, certainly not more ambitious, than 
her overrated husband, had greater tact than he, and pos- 
sessed, moreover, the high advantage of being a woman. 
Never acclimated to the feverish atmosphere of pre-revolu- 
tionary Paris, — an atmosphere hot with the discussion of 
problems whose real depths none saw or was capable of 

1 Quoted by Ste.-Beuve, Portraits des femmes^ 232. 



214 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

seeing/ — always a countrywoman in the Parisian sense, she 
nevertheless succeeded not only in building up a salon from 
the heterogeneous material ready to the hand of any skilful 
social architect, but in winning an entrance and a recog- 
nized place among the remote and all but impregnable fast- 
nesses of the old nobility. She and most of her self- 
conscious followers were mediocre; the haute noblesse were 
duller still; but, under circumstances far from favorable, 
Madame "N"ecker succeeded in establishing a really brilliant 
salon, the last of the old order. She did far better than 
this ; she created a favorable intellectual soil for her daugh- 
ter, the future Madame de Stael. The younger woman was 
neither mediocre nor Genevese; still less was she really 
Parisian ; rather was she European, possessed of a breadth 
and tolerance, rare enough at all times, and almost unknown 
then in the dweller in Paris. Madame de Stael was no less 
alert towards education ^ than towards other topics having 
life and contemporaneousness. She wrote sensibly regard- 
ing it, and was unusually broad in her grasp and treatment 
of pedagogic questions. 

But it was Madame Necker de Saussure, a Necker only 
by marriage,^ who was truly and distinctively an " education- 
ist." She too was Genevese; more than that, she was a 
Calvinist. The agony of the Jansenist breathes through 
her prayerful and anxious treatment of educational ques- 
tions. But she was too sensible to be gloomy, too wise to 
be ascetic; her Jansenism, therefore, is healthily modern. 
It is not the protection of the cloister, but that of the 
home, that she would throw around young girls. She 
would keep them in moral safety by discipline, but not 

1 Cf. E. J. Lowell, The Eve of the French Revolution. 

2 See, especially, De Vallemagne and De la litterature. 

3 She was daughter to the famous Swiss naturalist, H. B. de 
Saussure. 



WOMEN IN EDUCATION. 215 

by the somewhat empty discipline of the convent; rather 
by the normal pressure of a good home life and salutary 
home duties. While accepting the naturalism of Rousseau, 
she is a determined enemy to his doctrine of laissez faire, 
finding the chief fault of education to be "rather negative 
than positive " ; to be in " what is neglected rather than 
in what is done."^ She makes education in morals the 
supreme education, she shapes all teaching to the end of 
moral growth, but she discards the apparatus and intermedi- 
aries that her predecessors had placed around the child, and 
makes the parents the only — or, rather, the final — sponsors 
and workers for the child's spiritual progress. With solid 
reasoning and full understanding she demonstrates the 
responsibility of parenthood, that responsibility which can 
never, without hurt to the child, be shirked or delegated; 
she treats the home relations with that warm sympathy, that 
sentiment without sentimentality, and that nicety of dis- 
crimination which are peculiarly feminine. " It is so truly 
love," she says,^ "which produces love in the child, that he 
possesses an extraordinary tact for discovering it. His 
preferences, which appear unaccountable, are founded on 
an inconceivable divination in regard to this point. Ugli- 
ness, the infirmities of age, do not repulse him; the most 
essential services affect him but little; it is love that he 
wants, love without beauty, without external grace, without 
even a title to gratitude." 

Again she says : ^ " The sway of sympathy over little 
children is the cause of our power with them. Understand- 
ing language very incompletely and argument not at all, 
we could rule them only by force, if Heaven had not opened 
to us the way to their hearts. The instinct which compels 

^Teducprog., I. 104 (Ch. V.). 

2 Prog. Educ. (Willard's trans.), Ch. V. 175. 

^Ueduc.prog., I. 200 (Ch. V.). 



216 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

them to put themselves in harmony with us is the way 
chosen by Providence to make them adopt, unconsciously, 
our sentiments, and to mould their will upon ours." 

Madame Necker de Saussure was a most acute and judi- 
cious observer of children. She neglected no smallest trait 
of infancy, and drew wise inferences from the commonest 
acts of childhood ; but, on the other hand, she was not 
over-subtle. While conscious of the immense significance 
which may attach, in childhood, to seemingly trivial things, 
she did not build up exaggerated and remote explanations 
of everything done by the child. She recognized the fact 
that children are animals to such a degree that many of 
their acts are not only instinctive, but really purposeless. 
The infant mind, like any other untrained organ, works in 
a bungling and often aimless fashion, and it must not be 
held to too strict an accountability. 

Madame Necker de Saussure was, then, among the first 
to show the importance of child-study, to demonstrate that 
this investigation must be carried on among the petty hap- 
penings of the nursery, and to prove, therefore, the signal 
fitness of women for this task. More than this, she pur- 
sued that study in so scientific a way, her reasoning is so 
judicial, she vms so little carried away by theories or influ- 
enced by preconceived opinions, that she forms one of the 
safest of guides in this important branch of investigation. 

The German observers are, as a rule, too elaborate, too 
minute. They lack that scientific perspective without 
which just emphasis cannot be placed upon the heterogene- 
ous and often contradictory events of infant and child 
growth. Madame de Saussure, without their scientific 
training, possessed this wider and clearer vision. This 
intuition of the relative value of psychological data is a 
peculiarly feminine quality, and was possessed by the last of 
the Frenchwomen whom we shall consider, Madame Guizot. 



WOMEN IN EDUCATION. 217 

Madame Pauline Guizot,^ intellectually, was much more 
than an echo of her husband; she labored zealously and 
effectively with him upon his Anyiales de Veducation, and 
herself wrote — best among many good things — Lettres de 
famille sur Veducation. These family letters, the imagined 
correspondence of parents fully conscious of their respon- 
sibilities, are not only entertaining and suggestive, but they 
present and balance very successfully the divergent and 
sometimes conflicting points of view of the father and of 
the mother. They deal, therefore, with no small measure 
of success, with that double, or, indeed, four-sided problem, 
how the boy and the girl shall be reared by the father and 
mother jointly, so that there may be entire harmony of 
action without loss of personal or sexual individuality. 
These letters are marked by that stamp of sincerity which 
seizes the mind of the reader, arouses its interest, and makes 
it active in self-discussion. 

Two marked characteristics pervade Madame Guizot's 
writings, a spirit of intellectual democracy,^ and a belief 
in the home. " Of all the theories of education," she says,^ 
speaking of the mother, " there is not one equal, I believe, 

iSee Ste.-Beuve, Portraits desfemmes. 

'■^ " Her favorite idea, her cherished idea, was that the same moral 
education can and must be applied to all conditions ; that under the 
most diverse external circumstances, under bad and under good for- 
tune, whether designed for a low or a high destiny, a quiet or a fever- 
ish one, all men can attain, children must be educated to attain, an 
ethical development almost identical, — to the same uprightness, the 
same moral delicacy, the same loftiness of feeling and thought ; that 
the human soul contains within itself that which is equal to every 
accident, to every combination of human conditions ; and that it is a 
problem only of revealing to it the secret of its strength and of teach- 
ing the soul how to use it." — U7ie famille. Extract from preface, 
quoted by Ste.-Beuve (Port, desfemmes, 238). 

^ Conseils de morale, II. 72. 



218 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

to the constant force of this gentle care, always on the 
watch to remedy defects before they become too strong to 
repress, to propose aims that shall not be too difficult of 
attainment, to duplicate the little successes which encour- 
age, to foresee even the fear of the fall, so that the pupil, 
held up before he feels himself stumbling, has faith in the 
power which sustains him without being aware of the ex- 
tent of his feebleness which makes that support necessary." 

Madame Guizot's educational ideal is placed very high. 
She has in view neither the duty of the parent nor the self- 
interest of the child so much as that third something to 
which, as Froebel says,^ "teacher" (or parent) "and pupil 
are equally subject — the right, the best." No education 
can reach its highest development until those having it in 
charge, whether they be parents or teachers, regard it from 
that standpoint of ultimate human good, and make the 
training of the child, in the truest sense, a religious act. 

Among Englishwomen, until we reach Harriet Martineau, 
whose Household Education is full of good sense, and who, 
in a way, was the hrst to popularize the idea, in education, 
of training to good citizenship,^ there is no writer upon 
education who was not either the coadjutor of a literary 
man, or a schoolmistress politely crying her pedagogical 
wares. Exception might be made of Miss Edge worth, 
whose Practiced Education is a too greatly neglected book. 
But she is a propounder of methods rather than of principles, 
and her teachings are more suggestive than inspiring. 

No German woman, of course, wrote upon questions of 
education until, with Frau Marenholz-Biilow leading the 
way, the kindergartners began their aggressive and whole- 
some campaign. Since that day they have been legion, and 



1 See p. 205, ante. 

2 As, e.gr., in her Illustrations of Political Economy. 



WOMEN IN EDUCATION. 219 

have carried their mission into other countries where 
seconded — to mention only a few names — by Madame 
Pape-Carpantier in France, by Miss Shirreff and Mrs. Grey 
in England, by Miss Peabody and Mrs. Mann in the United 
States, they have done a noble work in arousing women to 
a sense of their responsible and indispensable part in for- 
warding the growth of the educational ideal. 

Mediocre, however, as most of the feminine apostles of 
education were, their preaching was tremendous in its 
effect. Motherhood began its evolution from merely phys- 
ical and material functions into the exercise of a spiritual 
mission. The rights of women began to appear as some- 
thing more than civil and political ones ; they grew to be 
understood as rights that should fill a wider field; rights 
that, by liberating the mother intellectually and morally, 
should, through her, free the child. Rousseau had made 
clear the tremendous moral role of the mother, and had 
incited women to fulfil that role. But not until the femi- 
nine writers dealt with the question was it seen that woman 
must herself be educated in order to educate her children, 
that she must have power in order to give dignity to her 
training, that she must be a partner, not a dependent, in 
this vital business of mankind, the intelligent rearing of 
its offspring. She is still far from the attainment of 
powers that must be hers before she can adequately fulfil 
those duties which always have been hers, and which, 
painfully and blindly, she has succeeded in fulfilling; but 
the path is now open to her ; the importance of her position 
is acknowledged; and it remains only to adapt, in the slow 
human way, the old conditions to the new ideals. 

With the dawning comprehension of what the mother 
owes to the child, and of what society owes to her, with 
the conception of education as a home process, a developing 
of the child by its natural trainers, the parents, in its natu- 



220 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

ral environment, the home, — schools, teachers, and social 
life being but accessories and aids, — education emerged at 
last wholly out of the shadow of monasticism, and lost its 
last bad tincture of medisevalism. The monks in the hf- 
teenth century had made it their task, as teachers, to lit 
their pupils to the routine, narrow, anti-social, and profit- 
less, which the Church laid down. AVith the rise of 
women as a power in education in the nineteenth century 
began the final stage in that long educational evolution by 
which these monkish aims are being reversed. Now, through 
study of the child, through discriminating sympathy, we 
are making it possible to provide an education that shall 
be in some degree fitted to the pupil. For centuries the 
compressive process had been brought to bear upon chil- 
dren; they had been systematically ground down; their 
real natures had been fettered; their instincts towards 
divinity had been crushed; and when, despite these weights 
and chains, they had had force to assert themselves, their 
independence had been given every manner of ugly name, 
and their revolt had been attributed to original depravity. 
Now we are to try the expansive process, letting nature 
furnish the impulse. 

The sins committed in the name of liberty pale before 
those committed under the guise of education. The school 
world was filled, in the old days, with the wails of chil- 
dren tortured in body and mind; with the strife of barbar- 
ous art contending with outraged nature; with the wrecks 
of fine souls ruined by mal-education. This battle and de- 
struction had tortured the mothers too. They had seen, 
and dimly understood, the pain that childhood suffered in 
this thwarting and distortion of its tendencies; they alone 
had known, vaguely, the vast gulf set, in so many cases, 
between the promise of childhood and the fulfilment of 
youth. For centuries they had accepted this perversion of 



WOMEN IN EDUCATION. 221 

nature as a necessary evil; they had bowed to the decrees 
of fate or Providence or the masculine will, and had re- 
mained in a double bondage, lashed with the stripes which 
fell upon their children, sharing the tortures of minds which 
in their blind worship of custom they were powerless to 
succor. As the light of greater individual freedom came 
to them, they began to perceive that it is the mother who 
knows her child, that it is she who holds the key to educa- 
tion, that this key is love, and that education is a task to 
be given not to ascetics, but to parents and, above all, to 
the mother, designed by God to be the developer of the 
being whom she has borne and suckled. 

With the appreciation of this new relationship between 
mother and child, came a new era to women and to chil- 
dren. The rise of the " motherhood " idea wrought in edu- 
cational methods a change different in kind from any 
advance that had preceded it. It was a change not unlike 
that which came over the study of human institutions 
when the " dismal science " of political economy flowered, 
perhaps, indeed, too exuberantly, into that of sociology. 
Educational theory, on the one hand, came out from the 
dim chamber of speculation into the light of experience; 
educational practice, on the other hand, shrank back from 
the noisy market-place of common trading into the halls of 
science and art, albeit of an empirical science and an ex- 
perimental art. 

We have seen how great a share Pestalozzi and Froebel 
took in this awakening of the home-power — that immense 
social force which had been so nearly dormant; we have 
seen how the former used sympathy and the latter, play, as 
instruments in forwarding civilization. Feminine in spirit 
and harmonious with child-nature as they were, however, 
they were powerless to extend their principles to their full- 
est value. They needed the co-operation of women to 



222 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

amend and complete their educational scheme. There 
arrived a time, perhaps earlier, perhaps later, than their 
time — human progress is too vast a thing to be fitted to 
the calendar — when it came to the comprehension of a 
few women that the kindergarten — or any association of 
children in mutual helpfulness under sympathetic direction 
rather than formal instruction — meant more than ap- 
peared upon the surface ; that it meant the reorganization 
of the entire educational system, that it entailed an enlarge- 
ment of the schoolroom to include both nature and society. 
They began to understand — as Comenius, more than two 
hundred years earlier, had tried to teach — that the nursery, 
too, is a school, that education is a process which begins 
with the first breath and ends only with the last. Peda- 
gogics, they dimly saw, must now be studied from a new 
standpoint. It must be not an impression upon, but an 
expression of, the child. The pupil, therefore, not the 
system of instruction, must be its focal point. 

With aims thus readjusted, these women began to under- 
stand the minds and bodies of children to be marvellous 
mechanisms whose adjustment is easily upset, their souls 
to be winged things which rough handling will destroy, 
which neglect will cause to fly away. It is the mother's 
blessed duty, they perceived, to study this mechanism, to 
preserve its delicate balance, to develop it and its fugitive 
tenant towards the doing of their best work in the world. 
Child study was not a new thing; it had been, after a fash- 
ion, a branch of science since scientific study had taken its 
first rude shape; but it had rested upon a purely formal 
basis, neutral and cold. With the rise of scientific mother- 
hood — to make use of a most barbarous term — child study, 
while losing nothing in accuracy, gained immensely in 
sympathy, broadening both its methods and its aims. Its 
data, no longer bloodless, breathed with the life and vigor, 



WOMEN IN EDUCATION. 223 

the astonishing moral variety and subtlety, of childhood. 
Education, touched with Promethean fire, became living 
and active, filling, as it ought, a large place in human 
thought and work. 

These changes have taken place, of course, only imper- 
fectly, and only in those upper intellectual strata in which 
all growth must originate, and from which it must filter 
down to the general mass of mankind. This permeation 
is now going on, and is producing a bewildering change 
and stir in the educational world. Everything is in fer- 
ment; there seems little but chaos and disputation, groping 
and oscillation ; no goal, no harmony of thought and work. 
In time we shall see order asserting itself, a true sequence 
of growth will be fixed upon, the skeleton of right training 
will be articulated; then we shall begin to realize what a 
thing this change in the midst of which we are, has been; 
how profoundly it has altered, or, rather, has helped for- 
ward, the course of civilization. 



224 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 



CHAPTER X. 

SUMMARY. 

THE PROCESS OP GROWTH OF THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL ; THE MIDDLE 
AGES ; THE RENAISSANCE ; THE HUMANISTS ; THE NATURAL-SCIEN- 
TISTS ; THE EDUCATIONAL DEMOCRATS ; THE SENSATIONALISTS ; 
ETHICAL EDUCATION ; THE TRUE DATA OF EDUCATION. 

The process of growth in the educational ideal has been 
one mainly of simplification. Intricate as our modern 
civilization is, it rests, in its highest development, upon 
ever simpler principles. Elaboration, far from being evi- 
dence of refinement, is a sign of incompleteness. Those 
moral attributes, those graces of manner which distinguish 
the gentleman and gentlewoman, are singular because of 
their naturalness. The refining process through which 
good-breeding comes, does not consist in elaboration of 
detail, is not made up of a complexity of minor morals 
and petty arts ; but is, on the contrary, a sloughing off of 
extraneous things, of that half-savage husk which, through 
inheritance, environment, or lack of teaching, overgrows 
commoner natures and hides the real, human kernel of 
natural simplicity. 

Progress towards a higher standard of education has been 
made through an analogous simplification. Nothing could 
have been more elaborate, more diffuse, more time-exhaust- 
ing, than the empty disputations and vain subtleties of the 
Schoolmen. Human nature was almost crushed under a 
weight of words. Civilization was sinking under a self- 
created burden of useless pedantry. The ignorance and 



SUMMARY. 225 

fear, the social isolation and ceaseless warfare of the early 
Middle Ages had given place to such meagre learning as 
was possible to men who were self-ignorant, fearful of 
research, disputatious, and ill-balanced. Such literature as 
had survived was theological and controversial ; those who 
interested themselves in it at all had no pleasure except in 
enlarging its disputations with ever vainer and subtler 
arguments. The tyrannical soldiery had no need to learn ; 
the over-taxed merchants had no time to study; the cor- 
rupted priesthood had no wish to know more than the little 
that the Church required. Free thought was heresy ; exper- 
imentation was witchcraft ; self-improvement was unhal- 
lowed ambition. The spirit of the Brahmin — a desire to 
keep themselves a class apart — tempted the few real scholars 
to the use of a mystic and obscure learning, of a symbolism 
which could be variously interpreted to meet the question- 
ings of a jealous and uncertain Inquisition. The Renaissance 
reformers, lopping off the false learning, the mysticism, the 
windy erudition of this scholastic training, left a solid and 
healthful foundation for true study, a basis of real education 
which had existed all the time, but which had been lost 
sight of under mountain weights of pedantry. These reform- 
ers did not create the learning which they made accessible ; 
classic scholarship lay fainting, not dead, under the pall of 
scholasticism ; they but revived it and made it again active. 
By restoring the classics the leaders of learning awakened 
European society to a partial sense of its intellectual pov- 
erty and created in it an appetite for fruitful study that, in 
time, demanded better mental food than the Schoolmen 
were able to provide. In answer to this demand came, not 
only the enlargement and expansion of the universities, but 
an improved order of boys' school, having for its main 
object the study, criticism, and imitation of the classical 
authors. 



226 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

This study, indeed, was little more profitable than the 
mediaeval learning ; but it was at least polished, and it 
rested upon a foundation more substantial than vain words 
and empty disputations. More than this, the schools of 
the humanists, by their emphasis of the literary side of 
study, made learning fashionable. Education in the 
Middle Ages had been theological in tendency, and had 
been confined, almost exclusively, to candidates for the 
Church. Since these aspirants, as a rule, were the younger 
sons and weaker brothers of the feudal families, they and 
their learning, equally, received the contempt of the unlet- 
tered, but more fortunate and more powerful, members of 
society. 

Now, however, with the revival of the classics, and 
with a partial cessation of warfare, learning became, in 
a measure, necessary to social and political success; the 
royal and ducal families vied with one another in en- 
couraging and maintaining scholarship; luxury, heretofore 
barbaric, refined itself into a taste for libraries and museums 
of art; and the schools and universities became crowded 
with the rich and nobly born. The wealth of the newly 
found East and West poured in to support and forward the 
intellectual revival, and the Eenaissance blossomed forth 
in splendor against a background of mediaeval poverty and 
ignorance. 

The improved education made possible by the Eenais- 
sance was, however, inadequate and artificial. Its antiquity 
unfitted it for human needs. It proved to be impossible to 
shape the learning of Greece and Eome to the enlarged 
requirements of a Western and more modern society. 
Education had to be amplified to meet the expanding social 
and industrial conditions. And this could be properly 
done only by reversing, in a measure, both the methods and 
the aims of study. It was found impossible to advance 



SUMMARY. 227 

the education given by the classicists beyond the point 
of mental polish, beyond the narrow limits of linguistic 
criticism and imitation. The manner of the teaching of 
these humanists was far ahead of that of the scholastics; 
but the matter, except in so far as it was enlarged to meet 
the needs of laymen, was scarcely more valuable than the 
dry logomachy of the Middle Ages. In Sturm's school, 
which may be regarded as the model institution of the 
humanists, little was taught beyond the studies of the 
" Trivium." Latin and Greek grammar, Latin-German and 
German-Latin translation, rhetoric, dialectic, the reading of 
classic authors, the acting of classic plays — that was prac- 
tically the whole of his school-course. The scholastic bar- 
barians had been routed, but only to leave their tender 
victims captive to the Greeks and Romans. 

The humanists had possessed themselves of the Greek 
learning, but it was necessary to search nature and man 
himself, not dusty archives, in order to find and appropri- 
ate the true Greek spirit. It was a nature -spirit, but a 
very limited and feeble one, when compared with that 
modern nature-spirit to the pursuit of which the growth 
of modern civilization is due. How to find this spirit, how 
to question it, how to adapt the knowledge gained from it 
to the business of life, — these were the next things to be 
learned. How to learn them was what Bacon, and those 
who followed him so closely, taught. In this teaching 
they put the work of education on that broad basis upon 
which it rests to-day. While it is difiicult to assign its 
proper value to any work of reform, it is not easy to exag- 
gerate the effect of these natural-scientists upon education. 
The way of study which they inspired seems, to-day, so 
simple, that one does not realize the change in human 
thought and in human life itself which was wrought by the 
overturning of the old methods and objects of teaching. The 



228 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

humanists, great as was tlieir reform, had made no distinct 
advance in the subjects to be taught in their schools, and 
the transition of education into the E-enaissance had not 
been a violent one. Attention had been transferred, it is 
true, from the barbarous and crabbed mediseval to the re- 
fined and lucid classical writings, the methods of study had 
been simplified, the atmosphere of learning had been greatly 
purified ; but, with the humanists, the mind was still the 
sole means, its culture the sole end, of study. The change 
which came through Bacon and his scientific contemporaries, 
however, was a far sharper one. It threw down all the 
familiar barriers within which learning had been pent, it 
opened to the student the limitless field of nature and 
society, it made possible the immediate conception of the 
modern educational ideal. 

But this ideal required two centuries more for its fram- 
ing. Social and political conditions continued to be, in 
the post-Baconian days, grievously artificial. The feudal 
system still fettered education. While the Eenaissance 
had vastly improved the educational opportunities of those 
few who were permitted to learn at all, the great masses 
gained little, if anything, by the change. They had 
to be emancipated, both politically and mentally, before 
civilization could make any important advance. The men 
of the Reformation began this work, but it remained for 
Comenius and the spirit that he aroused to forward it, 
to methodize it, and to make popular education a living 
force in the growth of European society. Then began that 
long struggle for emancipation which is still in progress 
and which, to-day, threatens a social crisis. While Bacon 
and the natural-scientists established the direction of 
modern education, it was Luther and Comenius who deter- 
mined its ultimate extent. 

The homely and common education which Luther and 



SUMMARY. 229 

Comenius made possible remained, like the higher instruc- 
tion, artificial and one-sided. Scholasticism continued to 
so far dominate all education as to limit its field to an 
intellectual training, until the materialists, by calling to 
their aid the sensual powers, remedied this defect, greatly- 
simplifying the educational process by bringing to bear upon 
it this strong new force. The work of materialism in the 
eighteenth century was necessary in order to make that of 
the earlier reformers come to fruition in the nineteenth. 

The intellect had been freed by the Eenaissance, and, 
by exercising itself upon the restored learning of the an- 
cients, had been made active and methodical. The natural- 
scientists, with Bacon as their leader, had opened vast 
new fields in which this active intellect might develop 
itself, and might turn itself away from barren learning 
towards fruitful experimentation and discovery. To these 
fields the founders of public education admitted new multi- 
tudes of minds, hitherto kept in passive subjection. To 
all these intellects, well-educated and ill-educated, the 
sensationalists gave new strength and power by training 
and enlarging the sensual powers. But, notwithstanding 
this advance, man remained incomplete, his progress 
threatened to be barren except of material results, and he 
was in danger of destruction by his own success, until a 
third and all-important force was enlisted in the work of 
education. 

This third power, the soul, is an essential factor in keep- 
ing due balance between the speculations of intellect and 
the grossness of sense. To the development and strength- 
ening of this side of human nature the educational work of 
the last century has, consciously and unconsciously, di- 
rected its effort. It is during this century, therefore, that 
educational questions have risen into such prominence 
and the educational ideal has been so wonderfully enlarged. 



230 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

It is because education has devoted itself to this side of 
humanity that, during this century, moral questions have 
been so conspicuous and moral growth has been so marked. 
It is because, in this short time, education and morality 
have taken such forward strides, that there is such hope 
and promise for mankind. 

This work, distinctively Christian, was begun, in modern 
days and on the spiritual side, by the Jansenists and those, 
Catholic and Protestant, whom their example inflamed; on 
the material side it was inaugurated by the early sensation- 
alists of whom Montaigne and Locke are types. But their 
contributions to educational progress were lost sight of in 
the religious and social tumult of the eighteenth century, 
until Eousseau, rescuing and reconciling them, gave them an 
abiding life. This quickened impulse, which Pestalozzi and 
Froebel strengthened and carried forward, and which is 
inspiring myriads of parents and teachers to-day, has done 
more to enlarge the educational ideal than was accomplished 
in all the Christian centuries which preceded ours. But 
the slow work of those earlier times was an unavoidable 
and an essential preparation, and even the splendid advance 
of to-day is only a first step in that long journey of progress 
which still lies ahead. 

So long as the teaching of children was a matter of the 
intellect only, so long as the degree of civilization demanded 
only an educational veneer, just so long did the school 
remain a separate institution, with its special priesthood, 
its useless forms, its idle ceremonies, its false limitations. 
As soon as it was perceived that education is life itself, the 
agencies of education became illimitable. The process was 
then seen to be, not one of painful and narrow information, 
but one of careful guidance among the endless means of 
training pressing in from every side. Teaching resolved 
itself into a process of wise and sympathetic selection. 



SUMMARY. 231 

Under this new conception of education, the mother comes 
forward into hitherto unimagined prominence. She is the 
natural agent, closest to the child during the all-important 
period of formation, when the pressure of external condi- 
tions must be most carefully regulated, when the channels 
through which they shall act must be most skilfully 
planned. Upon her must rest, to an extraordinary degree, 
the responsibility for the right guidance of the senses and 
the will of her offspring through the maze of natural phe- 
nomena. Only a little less than hers, however, is the re- 
sponsibility of the father. These two, and these alone, have 
a direct interest in the child. By its feebleness and igno- 
rance, no less than by the parental instinct, is the child 
bound to them, and they to it. With them rests the initia- 
tive and the final responsibility for the infant's rearing, 
the child's education, the youth's preparation for the Avork 
of life.^ The school and the schoolmaster are still neces- 
sary factors in education, but they are no longer primary 
ones. They are adjunct only in the holy work that must 
rest supremely upon the father and the mother. 

1 " It is only by united action, and only through the children, 
through the care and training of childhood, that the two sexes can 
reach their lofty aim, the aim of mankind, of our nation, and of 
every family, — to completely fulfil our common vocation and realize 
our destiny. . . . The care of childhood is seen to be the one unfail- 
ing, perfectly satisfactory condition and means of uniting the two 
separate sexes to form the one great body of mankind and fully to 
work out their destiny. This chord of three notes melts together in a 
higher sense to form an unison, which sounds abroad in a full and 
clear tone. This larger unity is but the unity of the family over 
again, where the love of the two parents finds in the child its meaning 
and its union, attains its purpose and meets its God and Father, reaches 
its highest development of means and aim, of condition and destiny. 
Childhood and Manhood melt together to form the unity of Mankind, 
and this last, as the everlasting child of God, melts in its turn into 
unity with its Divine Father," — Froebel, Appeal to German Women, 
.June 26, 1848 (Michaelis-Moore, FroeheVs Let., 266). 



232 THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL. 

The schoolmaster's task is not, however, lightened. The 
new conception of it makes the educational problem simpler, 
but it makes it at the same time infinitely more serious. 
Comenius's "mother-school" that "should exist in every 
house" is becoming possible; upon the fundamental plan 
of such a mother-school all education must be shaped. It 
is no longer a simple question of the intellectual value of 
this study and of that ; it is no longer to be decided what 
manner and quantity of information shall be given. It is 
a question now of determining those subjects and those 
methods which shall best supplement and carry forward 
the training of character, the real education to true man- 
hood and womanhood that is or ought to be given in the 
home, under the parents' guidance. The solution of the 
problem is perhaps not greatly furthered; but the problem 
itself, the questions of what education is, whither it should 
tend, and upon what broad principles it should be carried 
forward, are, it seems to me, no longer in doubt. 

With the mothers and the fathers, too, aroused to the 
fact that they are teachers, and that the home is a school- 
house ; with the study which they must increasingly give, 
under this new light, to that complex organism, the child; 
with the physiological and psychical sciences resting upon 
data which shall be thus collected, — the day for a rapid 
growth in educational methods is not far distant. To know 
exactly what one's problem is carries one forward with in- 
creasing speed towards its solution. Having, after cen- 
turies of wandering, brought the child back to his proper 
atmosphere, his home, having determined who shall be 
responsible for his teaching, and what shall be the final 
aim of that teaching, we have, indeed, put the educational 
question upon a sound and healthy basis. We have at 
last learned how to follow nature; and we are beginning 
to understand that the best education, indeed the only 
right education, is a natural one. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Following is a partial list of the books read and consulted in 
preparation for The Educational Ideal. The editions noted are those 
to which the author had access, and, in many cases, are not the best. 
A number of the English books have been republished in America ; 
and there are, doubtless, other translations from the French and Ger- 
man than those indicated. To make the bibliography of greater value, 
those books which are believed to be most useful in a general study of 
the subject of this volume are indicated by a star [*]. 

GENERAL WORKS. 

*Barnard, Henry, [Editor,] American Journal of Education. 31 v. 
1855-1881. [An invaluable collection.] 

* Analytical Index of Barnard^ s Amer. Journ. of Education. [Bureau 
of Education, 187.] Washington, 1892. 

Barnard, Henry, [Editor.] English pedagogy. (Compiled from Amer. 
Journ. of Education.) Philadelphia, 1866. 

Barnard, Henry, [Editor.] German pedagogy. (Compiled from 
Amer. Journ. of Education.) Hartford, 1871. 

Barnard, Henry, [Editor.] National Ejjlucation in Europe. (Com- 
piled from Amer. Journ. of Education.) New York, 1864. 

Bayle, Pierre. Dictionnaire historique et critique. 4 v. Rotterdam, 
1720. 

Browning, Oscar. An introduction to the history of educational theo- 
ries. New York, 1891. 

Bryce, James. The Holy Boman Empire. New York, 1887. 

Buckle, Henry Thomas. History of civilization in England. 2 v. 
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Goldammer, Hermann. Der Kindergarten. Handhuch der FroheVschen 
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*Guimps, Roger de. Pestalozzi, his life and work. (Trans, by J. 
Russell.) London, 1890. [Published, also, in Int. educ, series.] 

*Hailmann, W. N., [Editor.] Friedrich Froebel: The Education of 
man. (Trans, from the German and annotated.) (Int. ed. ser.) 
New York, 1892. 

Herbart, Johann Friedrich. Ueber Pestalozzi's Schrift ; wie Gertrud, 
etc.; and Pestalozzi's Idee eines ABC der Anscliauung als ein 
Cyklus, etc.; in Sdmmt. Werke (her. von G. Hartenstein), B. XL 
Leipzig, 1851. 

Herford, William H., [Editor.] The studenVs Froebel ; adapted from 
Die Erziehung der Menschheit of F. Froebel. (Pt. I. Theory of 
education.) (Heath's pedagogical lib.) Boston, 1894. 

Johonnot, James. Pestalozzi; and Froebel and the kindergarten ; in 
Principles and practice of teaching . New York, 1891. 

Kriege, Matilda H. The child, its nature and relations ; an elucida- 
tion of FroebeVs principles of education. (A free rendering of 
the German of the Baroness Marenholtz-Biilow. ) New York, 
1872. 

Kruesi, H. Sketch of the life and character of Pestalozzi. (Lect. 
before the Am. Inst, of Instruction, Aug., 1853.) Boston, 1854. 

Lyschinska, Mary J. ; and Montefiore, Therese G. The ethical teach- 
ing of Froebel as gathered from his works. London, 1890. 

Mann, Mrs. Horace; and Peabody, Eliz. P. Moral culture of infancy 
and kindergarten guide. New York, 1869. 

Marenholtz-Biilow, [Baroness.] Child and child-nature. Contribu- 
tions to the understanding of FroebeVs educational theories. 
(Trans, by Alice M. Christie.) London, 1879. 

*Marenholz-Biilow, B. von, [Baroness.] Bemifiiscences of Friedrich 
Froebel. (Trans, by Mrs. Horace Mann ; with a sketch of the 
life of Froebel by Emily Shirreff.) Boston, 1891. 

Meyer, Bertha. Aids to family government ; or, from the cradle to 
the school, according to Froebel. (Trans, by M. L. Holbrook.) 
New York, 1879. 

*Michaelis, Emilie; and Moore, H. Keatley, [Editors.] Friedrich 



246 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Frobel; Autobiography. (Trans, and annotated.) London, 
1886. 

*Michaelis, Emilie ; and Moore, H. Keatley, [Editors.] FroebeVs 
letters on the kindergarten. (Trans.) London, 1891. 

Peabody, Elizabeth P. Lectures in the training schools for kinder- 
gartners. (Heath's pedagogical lib.) Boston, 1893. 

Pestalozzi, J. H. Sdmmtliche Schriften. 15 v. Stuttgart u. Tubingen, 
1819-25. 

*Pestalozzi, J. H. Wie Gertrud ihre Kinder lehrt. (Univers. Biblio- 
thek, 991, 992.) Leipzig, n.d. 

Konge, Johann and Bertha. A practical guide to the English kinder- 
garten. London, 1858. 

*Rosmini-Serbati, Antonio. Tlie ruling principle of method applied 
to education. (Trans, by Mrs. William Grey.) (Heath's ped- 
agogical lib.) Boston, 1889. 

Scudder, Horace E. Childhood in literature and art. Boston, 1894. 

Shirreff, Emily. A short sketch of the life of Friedrich Frobel. (A 
new edition, including Frobel's letters from Dresden and Leipzig 
to his wife.) London, 1887. 

WOMEN IN EDUCATION. 

Aim6-Martin, L. Education des meres de famille ; ou de la civilisa- 
tion du genre humain par les femmes. Paris, 1843. 

Baudrillart, Henri. La famille et Veducation en France dans leurs 
rapports avec Vetat de la societe. Paris, 1874. 

Baudrillart, H. J. L. Madame de Sta'el ; in Etudes, etc. (See 
Rousseau.) 

*Blennerhassett, Lady. 3Iadame de Sta'el, her friends, and her influ- 
ence in politics and literature. 3 v. London, 1889. 

Brandes, Georg. Frau von Sta'el; in Die Litteratur, etc. (See 
Rousseau. ) 

Campan, Mme. Thoughts on education; in Conversations of Mme. 
Campan, comprising secret anecdotes of the French court, with 
corresp>ondence, etc. (Edited by M. Maigne. Translated.) Lon- 
don, n.d. 

*Dobson, Austin. Four Frenchwomen. London, 1890. 

Duffy, Bella. Madame de Sta'el. (Famous women.) Boston, 1887. 

Dupanloup, F. A. P., [Eveque d'Orleans.] La femme studieuse. 
Paris, 1869. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 247 

*Edgeworth, Maria and R. L. Practical education. 2 v. New York, 
1801. 

Fawcett, Mrs. Henry, Some eminent loomen of our times. London, 
1889. 

Gasparin, Agenor de, [le comte.] La famille ; ses devoirs, ses joies 
et ses douleurs. 2 v. Paris, 1865. 

Genlis, S. F. du C. de St. A., [comtesse de.] CEuvres. 84 v. Paris, 
1825-26. 

Genlis, Countess de. Memoirs, illustrative of the history of the 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. New York, 1825. 

Genlis, Countess de. Lessons of a governess to her pupils, or journal 
of the method adopted by Madame de Sillenj-Brulart {formerly 
Countess de Genlis) in the education of the children of M. d'' Or- 
leans, First Prince of the Blood- Boy al. (Pubs, by herself. 
Trans, from the French.) 3 v. London, 1792. 

Guizot, Mme. Conseils de morale. 2 v. Paris, 1828. 

* Guizot, Mme. Lettres de famille sur V education. 2 v. Paris, 1852. 
Haussonville, G. P. O. de C, [vicomte d'.] Le salon de Madame 

Necker d'apres des documents tires des archives de Coppet. 2 v 
Paris, 1882. 
Mann, Horace. A few thoughts on the powers and duties of woman. 
Syracuse, 1853. 

* Martineau, Harriet. Household education. London, 1861. 
More, Hannah. Works. 8 v. Philadelphia, 1818. 

*Necker de Saussure, Mme. L' education progressive. 2 v. Paris, 

1828. 
Necker de Saussure, Mme. Progressive education. (Trans, from the 

French : with notes and an appendix ; by Mrs. Willard and Mrs. 

Phelps.) Boston, 1835. 
*01iver, Grace A. A study of Maria Edgeworth with notices of her 

father and friends. Boston, 1882. 
*Sainte-Beuve, C.-A. Portraits des femmes. Paris, 1884. [There 

is an English translation.] 
Stael, Mme. la Baronne de. (Euvres completes. Puhliees par son fils ; 

precedees dhme notice sur la caractere et les ecrits de Mme. de 

Stael par 3Ime. Necker de Saussure. 17 v. Paris, 1820. [There 

are English translations of many of Mme. de Stael's writings.] 



INDEX. 



Abbey of Theleme, 29, 30, 33. 

Abbott, E. A., 39. 

Abelard, 9. 

Academy of arts and sciences, 62, 

" Academy " of Charlemagne, 8. 

Adele et Theodore, Genlis's, 212. 

Advancement of Learning, Bacon's, 

39, 45, 52, 57, 60-63. 
Age of faith, 95. 
Agnosticism, 96, 109. 
Agriculture, 26, 62, 181. 
Aix-la-Chapelle, 9. 
Alanus in paixibolis, 17. 
Alchemists, 113. 
Alexandria, 25. 

Allemagne, De V, de Stael's, 194, 214. 
Almane, Baron d', 212. 
Alphabet, 90. 
America, 76, 77, 81, 153, 154, 187, 194, 

205, 219. 
Amer. Journ. Educ, Barnard's, 86, 

94, 180. 
Amsterdam, 76, 104. 
Anatomy, 120. 
Ancients, 50, 51, 53, 61, 69, 94, 131, 

132, 229. 
Anglo-Saxon, 95. 
Anjou, Counts of, 12. 
Annates de V education, Guizot's, 217. 
Anschauung, 193, 199. 
Appeal to German women, Froebel's, 

231. 
Apperception, 192, 193. 
Applied science, 62. 
Aquaviva, 88, 128, 129. 
Arabic, 23. 



Aristotle, 25, 43, 46, 51, 65, 70, 94, 

106, 131, 132, 160. 
Arithmetic, 19, 23, 26, 82, 84, 85. 
Arnauld, Angelique, 138, 140-143; 

Autoiue, 136, 139, 140, 146. 
Art, 98, 99, 166, 226. 
Art of education, 5, 21, 58, 221. 
Arts, 62, 85, 86, 89, 111. 
Arts, liberal, 85, 122, 131. 
Asceticism, 28, 29, 137, 221. 
Ascham, 50, 68. 
Asia, 25. 
Astrology, 23. 

Astronomy, 20, 23, 82, 85, 120, 166. 
Athalie, Racine's, 151. 
Athens, 122. 

Atlantis, New, Bacon's, 62. 
Atrium, Comeuius's, 77, 78. 
Augmentis scientiarum, De, Bacon's, 

57, 60. 
Augustine, St., 137, 138. 
Augustinus, Jansen's, 138, 139. 
Autobiography , Froebel's, 190, 195, 

201. 
Axioms, 46, 47. 

Babel, 92. 

Bacon, Francis, 5-7, 36-67, 68-71, 74 
79, 81, 92-94, 97, 113, 114, 133, 189 
227-229; achievements, 45-48, 59 
63; aims, 42^6, 97; career, 38-40 
66; character, 37, 40-42, 66, 71 
contributions to science, 48, 63 
doctrine of forms, 41, 54; essays 
39, 63; genius, 38, 42-46, 49, 59 
homeliness, 67 ; humanness, 65, 66 



249 



t^ 



250 



INDEX. 



Idola, 55-50, 113 ; influence, 5, 43, 
48, 59, 63, (]()-()\\ 1>4; large views, 
4i), ()5, 70; philosophy, 42-^53, GO, 
70, 74, 02, 03, 145; principles of 
human pro.ijress, (54, 00, 74, 02; 
relations to Essex, 38 ; style, GG, G7 ; 
writings, 39-42, 45-47, 57, 50-G4. 

Bacon, Church's, (i5; de Remnsat's, 
4G; Fowler's, 38, (;G; Macaulay's.GG. 

Bacon, Life of, Abbott's, 30; Raw- 
ley's, 38 ; Spedding's, 40, 42. 

Bacon and Essex, Abbott's, 39. 

Bacon, Nicholas, 38. 

Bacon's Works (Spedding), 38,41-45, 
48, 51-54, CO, 62, 71, 07. 

Bain, A., 60. 

Bardeen, C. AV., 90, 91. 

Barnard, H., 86,04, 180, 183, 185, 192, 
193, 200, 208. 

Barri, du, 143. 

Bayle, P., 75, 76, 78. 

Beard, C, 136, 139, 144. 

Beauty, 00. 

Beckx, P., 129, 132. 

Beeger, 70, 82, 83. 

Bell, A., 85. 

Bellay, J. du, 12. 

Bentham, 95. 

Besaut, W., 18, 28, 30, 34, 35. 

Bharata, 21. 

Biber, E., 191. 

Bible, 18, 23, 24, 51, 68, 85, 93, 96, 132. 

Bihliotheque univ., Le Clerc's, 137, 
138. 

Bohemia, 72. 

Bossuet, 147, 148. 

Bourne, H. R. Fox, 104. 

Bo wen, H. C, 195, 200. 

Boyle, 105. 

Brahmin, Spirit of, 225. 

Brethren, United, JO-73, 76, 92. 

Brewer, Prof., 70. 

Brown, Dr. J., 106. 

Browning, O., 71. 

Brunetiere, F., 148, 158. 

Buckingham, 40, 41. 

Buckle, H. T., 95. 

Burgdorf, 187-190. 



I Burghley, 38. 

! Burgundy, Duke of, 147-149. 



Cabal, The, 103. 

Cabalists, 24. 

Cajot, 153. 

Calvin, 137. 

Calvinism, 13, 137, 138, 141, 171, 214. 

Cambrai, 147, 148, 151. 

Campbell, Lord, 37. 

Carlyle,T.,3, 99. 

Carmagnole, The, 143. 

Cartwright, W. C, 135. 

Casuistry, 134, 135, 143, 147. 

Causeries du hmdi, Ste.-Beuve's, 
211. 

Cecils, The, 38, 39. 

Celts, 95. 

Centralization in France, 208, 209. 

Chaldee, 23. 

Channing, E., 182. 

Characteristics, Shaftesbury's, 103. 

Charlatanism, 195. 

Charlemagne, 8. 

Charles I., 40, 74. 

Charmettes, Les, 156. 

Chauncey, Pres., 77. 

Child, The, 1, (5, 59, 82, 85, 93, 128, 
130, 141-14(), 150, 159, 166, 169, 
172-174, 183, 184, 190-194, 198, 
200-211, 215, 218-232; creative- 
ness of, 104, 202; emancipation 
of, 205, 210, 220; individuality of, 
150, 202, 203 ; investigation by, 59, 
93; nature of, 166, 1«)3, 198, 221; 
rights of, 172-174, 208; self-activ- 
ity of, 200 ; training of, 80, 84, 130, 
169, 184, 215, 218, 222, 231. 

Childhood, compression of, 220; free 
from ennui, 168; and religion, 142, 
150; sympathy for, 141, 142, 144, 
215. 

Children, association of, 222; atti- 
tude of Jansenists towards, 141- 
144 ; complexity of, 231, 232 ; love 
of, 183, 100, 215 ; rational creatures, 
118, 146. 

Child-study, 59, 130, 216, 220, 222. 



INDEX. 



251 



Chinon, 12. 

Chivalry, 24, 30, 209. 

Christ, 136, 142, 184. 

Christ Church, 102. 

Christian education, 9, 72, 80, 84, 94. 

Christianity, 84, 132, 13(5, 2.30; child- 
hood and, 142, 159; commonwealth 
of, 125. 

Christianity, Reafionableness of, 
Locke's, 91). 

Christians, 50; union of, 73, 92, 125. 

Christoph u. Elsa, Pestalozzi's, 183. 

Chronique, Rabelais's, 14. 

Chronology, 82, 85, 120. 

Church, R. W., 05. 

Church, The, 0, 12, 13, 16, 28, 85, 99, 
131, 1.32, 136, 137, 145, 147, 151, 156, 
220, 225, 226; education of, 9; 
emancipation of, 125 ; Fathers of, 
8 ; influence of, 124 ; military, 12(), 
127, 130; relations of Jesuits to, 
126. 

Church universal, A, 93. 

Cicero, 23, .50, 51. 

Citizenship, good, 218. 

Civilization, 194, 205, 208, 209 ; future 
of, 202; modern, 10, 224, 227; pro- 
gress of, 34, 04, 65, 221, 223, 228. 

(Jivilization in Eny., Buckle's, 95. 

Classicism, 5, 6, .37, 50, 61, 65, 68-70, 
94, 132, 145, 225-228. 

Classicists, .37, 58, 68, 69, 94, 227. 

Clerc, Le, 137, 138. 

Coeducation, 80. 

College de France, 12. 

Colleges, 80. 

Columbus, 54. 

Comenius, 6, 7, 68-94, 97, 98, 114, 133, 
142, 159, 194, 208, 222, 228, 232; 
aim, 85, 97, 98; Bishop, 72, 73, 76; 
career, 70-77 ; character, 71, 72, 75, 
89; influence upon public schools, 
70-81, 88, 94; language teaching, 
89-92; maxims, 86; mysticism, 73, 
76, 78, 89; pan-Christian scheme, 
73-75, 92-94, 159 ; pedagogy, 81-92; 
principles, 79, 81-85; text-books, 
73, 75, 89, 93; use of method, 87, I 



88, 94; writings, 72, 73, 75-78, 82- 

93. 
Common-sense, 113. 
Compayre', G., 9, 50, 60, 128, 132, 188. 
Compost, The, 18. 
Conduct of the Understanding, 

Locke's, 102, 106, 111, 114. 
Confessions, Rousseau's, 1.55-157. 
"Connectedness," 200. 
Conseils de 7norale, Mme. Guizot's, 

217. 
Constitutiones of Jesuits, 127, 129, 

131-1,34. 
"Continuity," 200. 
Contrat social, Du, Rousseau's, 153, 

157, 164. 
Cook, T. A., 12. 
Cooke, Ann, 38. 
Copernican theory, 54. 
Cosmography, 23. 
Courtney, W. L., 97. 
Cousin, v., 3, 140. 
"Creativeness," 200. 
Cretineau-Joly, 140. 
Cyrene, 25. 

Dark Ages, 8, 98. 

Darwin, C, 6. 

Declaration of Independence, 153. 

Deduction, 33, 46, 47, 64. 

"Dei Gloriam, Ad Majorem," 127, 
131. 

Democracy, 70, 74, 99, 125, 126, 209. 

Democratic party, 153. 

I)e niodis signijicandi, Garlande's, 
17. 

Demosthenes, 50. 

Den, Idols of, 55-58. 

Descartes, 5,6, 71, 109, 133, 145, 146. 

Descriptio globi intellectualis. Ba- 
con's, 54. 

Dialectic, 83, 85, 131, 227. 

Dialogues of the Dead, Fenelon's, 
149. 

Diane de Poitiers, 13. 

Dictionnaire, Bayle's, 76. 

Didactic, Great, Comenius's, 73, 77- 
84, 93. 



252 



INDEX. 



Discipline, 85, 94, 120, 133. 
Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau's, 

157. 
Dobson, A., 211. 
Doct. de Ved. en France, Compayre's, 

50, 128, 132. 
Donat, 17. 
Douarche, A., 130. 
Dunster, Pres., 77. 
Dupanloup, Mgr., 167. 
Durham, Bishop of, 17. 

Economics, 83-85, 147. 

Edgeworth, M., 218. 

Edict of dispersion, 73. 

Edinburgh, 78. 

Education, American, 81, 194, 205, 
219; art of, 5, 21, 58, 221; " Ans- 
chauung" in, 193,199; Christian, 
9, 72, 80, 84, 94; to citizensliip, 
218; CO-, 80; development of, 3, 
37, 57, 65, 67, 68, 73, 79, 106, 110, 
124, 144, 195, 202, 205, 218, 220, 222, 
224, 230, 2.32 ; discipline in, 85, 94, 
120, 133; ends of, 190, 195, 205; 
English, 50, 69, 77, 85, 122, 183, 
194, 208, 218; founded upon love, 
196, 202, 215, 221 ; German, 81, 194, 
208, 218; gregarious, 102; of hand, 
84, 86, 94, 121, 175, 177 ; higher, 59, 
61, 63, 80, 229; history of, 2, 70, 
98; home, 116, 117, 141, 202, 219, 
231, 232; immoral, 135; indirect, 
149, 150; individual, 130, 134, 150, 
179, 193, 202, 217, 220; intellectual, 
2, 19, 68, 86, 88, 94, 129, 229; medi- 
aeval, 4, 6, 37, 50, 131, 220, 224, 229 ; 
method in, 85-88, 94, 132, 134, 188 ; 
monastic, 88, 220; moral, 2, 19, 58, 
80-85,94, 116, 119, 144, 170, 189, 
205, 215, 217, 230, 2.32 ; " natural," 
2,58, 59, 71, 143, 220, 2.32; objec- 
tive, 58, 71, 88, 90; physical, 2, 19, 
21,27, 88, 117, 119, 121, 170, 171; 
practical, 84; primary, 88, 128; 
public, 6, 50, 68, 70, 80-84, 94, 116, 
128, 183, 194, 228, 229; rational, 
118, 150; rewards in, 120, 134, 177; 



routine, 69; science of, 5, 17, 21, 
59, 63, 113, 114, 149, 204, 221 ; sec- 
ondary, 69, 81, 128; superficial, 
128, 134, 145, 212, 230; supreme 
principle of, 182 ; systematic, 127 ; 
true, 4, 10, 17, 21, 36, 57, 59, 65, 
79-81, 85, 92, 94, 116, 119, 121, 142, 
205, 210, 218, 232; of women, 149, 
150, 152, 197, 212, 219; women in, 
207-223, 230-232. 

Education, Essay on, Montaigne's, 
102, 115-123. 

Education, Letters on Early, Pesta- 
lozzi's, 183. 

Education, Science of, Herbart's, 89. 

Education, Thoughts on, Locke's, 
102, 106, 115-119. 

Education, Tractate on, Milton's, 25. 

Education as a Science, Bain's, 69. 

Education of Man, Froebel's, 199, 
201, 204-206. 

Educational ideal, 1, 8, 36, 49, 124, 
176, 218, 224, 228, 229. 

Educational Reformers, Quick's, 71, 
132, 183. 

Educational Theories, Browning's, 
71. 

Educational vigilance, 1(50. 

"Educationists," 211, 214. 

Eighteenth century, 3, 98, 99, 146, 
161, 209, 229, 2.30. 

Elbing, 75. 

Elizabeth, Queen, 5, 38, 39. 

Ellis, R. L.,41,97. 

Emerson, R. W., 100. 

:^mile, 160, 162-168, 172, 178, 207, 
210. 

Eniile, Rousseau's, 98, 154-158, 160- 
^ 163, 165-167, 169-177, 179, 210-212. 

Eniile et Sophie, Rousseau's, 211. 

Encyclopedism, 81, 84, 88, 92, 180. 

Endowed schools, 102, 116, 208. 

Enfant, L\ Dupanloup's, 167. 

England, 5, 74, 75, 85, 104, 106, 122, 
208, 219 ; education in, 50, 69, 77, 
85, 122, 183, 194, 208, 218. 

English Revolution, 104. 

Englishwomen, 208. 



INDEX. 



253 



^pinay, Mme. d', 157. 

Epistemon, 23. 

Epitaph, Locke's, 104. 

Epitomes, 61. 

Erasmus, 10, 51. 

Essais, Montaigne's, 100, 101, 115- 
119. 

Essay, Locke's, 97, 102, 104, 106-114. 

Essex, Earl of, 38-40. 

Esther, Racine's, 151. 

Ethical sense, feminine, 180. 

Ethics, 27, 42, 58, 83-85, 110, 131, 199, 
215, 230. 

Eton, 41. 

Europe, 40, 72, 90, 172, 187 ; dissen- 
sions in, 92; modern, 15; politics 
in, 120; reform of, 143, 154, 159, 
228 ; Renaissance in, 10, 124, 225 ; 
universities of, 63. 

Europe, JSfat. Education in, Bar- 
nard's, 208. 

Eve of the French Revolutio7i, Low- 
ell's, 214. 

" Ewig-Weibliche, Das," 210. 

Experience, 107, 108. 

Experimentation, 63, 114, 188, 213, 
225, 229. 

Fables, Fe'uelon's, 149. 

Facet, Le, 17. 

" Fait et droit," 136. 

Faith, Age of, 95. 

Family, The, 82, 121, 182-184, 197, 
206, 209-212, 215, 219-222, 231, 232. 

Fanaticism, 180, 181, 190, 195. 

Fatherhood, 183, 206, 215, 231, 232. 

Fathers of the Church, 8, 9. 

Faugere, P., 152. 

Faust, Goethe's, 14. 

Female Education, More's, 207. 

Femmes d'esprit, 154, 209. 

Femmes, Portraits des, Ste.-Beuve's, 
213, 217. 

Fenelon, 7, 147-152 ; exile, 148, 151 ; 
influence, 151, 152; method, 149- 
151 ; tutor to " Little Dauphin," 
147, 148 ; writings, 149, 150. 

F4nelon, Janet's, 148. 



Feudalism, 6, 226, 228. 

Fichte, 193. 

Fifteenth century, 9, 220. 

Fischer, K., 43. 

Five Propositions, The, 136, 139, 144. 

Fleury, J., 13, 30, 34. 

Florio, 101. 

Foix, Countess of, 102, 115. 

"Form," Pestalozzi's, 191, 192. 

Formal studies, 2, 129, 131. 

Formalism, 203. 

Forms, Bacon's doctrine of, 41, 54. 

Fouillee, A., 6. 

Four Frenchioomen, Dobson's, 211. 

Fowler, T., 38, 39, 66. 

France, 5, 38, 139, 140, 144, 149, 153- 
156, 219; aristocracy of, 175; free 
thought in, 15 ; influence of Louis 
XIV. upon, 146-148; a leader in 
thought, 10, 143, 194, 208 ; material- 
ism in, 95; ruled hy Paris, 209; 
reconstruction of, 21.3. 

France, Hist, of, Michelet's, 12, 15; 
Stephen's, 15. 

Francis I., 13, 15. 

Frankfort, 195. 

Franklin, B., 5. 

Eraser, A. C, 106. 

Freedom, 172-174, 228; Intellectual, 
59, 60, 122, 125, 131, 143, 171, 225, 
229 ; spirit of, 16, 126. 

French Jansenists, Tollemache's, 
139. 

French occupation of Switzerland, 
185-187. 

French Revolution, 98, 140-143, 155, 
209, 211. 

French Revolution, Carlyle's, 99. 

Frenchwoman, The, 208, 209, 211. 

Friar John, 30, 31. 

Froebel, 7, 142, 179-206, 208, 221, 
2.30, 231 ; autobiography, 190, 195, 
201 ; character, 197, 198, 203 ; dis- 
ciples, 197, 201, 204; the false and 
the true, 203, 204 ; games, 200-204 ; 
and Germany, 198; influence, 205 ; 
and kindergarten, 59, 121, 200- 
204, 222; life, 196, 196, 203, 204; 



254 



INDEX. 



and Pestalozzi, 195-197; princi- 
ples, 196-202, 205, 206 ; psychology, 

200, 201; writings, 190, 195, 199- 
206, 231. 

Froebel, Bowen's, 195, 200. 
Fulgentio, 42. 
Fulneck, 72. 

Galileo, 48. 

Games, Froebel's, 200, 202, 203. 

Gargamelle, 16. 

Gargautua, 12, 16-22, 29. 

Gargantua, Rabelais's, 14, 17, 18, 29. 

Garlande, J. de, 17. 

Geer, de, 74-76. 

Geneva, 156, 159, 213, 214. 

" Geneva, Citizen of," 212. 

Genius, men of, 3, 46, 197. 

Genlis, Mme. de, 211-213. 

Geography, 82-85, 120. 

Geometry, 20, 23, 26, 82, 85, 120, 146. 

Geraudo, de, 6. 

German education, 81, 194, 208, 218; 
women, 218, 231. 

Germans, 50, 90, 198, 199, 216. 

Germany, 6, 194, 198, 208. 

Gessner, 185, 190, 192. 

Gibbon, 137. 

" Gifts," Froebel's, 203, 204. 

Gil Bias, 156. 

Gilbert, 48. 

Girardin, 152. 

Girls, Education of, Fenelon's, 149, 
150. 

Gnosticism, 96. 

God, 80, 94, 98, 114, 122, 142, 184, 
216, 221; faith in, 32, 97, 109; 
glory of, 127, 131 ; grace of, 23, 25, 
26, 141; gratitude to, 19, 20, 22, 
182; idea of, 90, 159; manifesta- 
tion of, 68; omnipotence of, 79, 
84 ; unity with, 29, 199, 231 ; word 
of, 51, 136 ; works of, 28, 64, 89, 

201, 202. 
Goethe, 14. 

Gothic architecture, 10. 

Goths, 23. 

Government, Treatises of, J^ock.Q'&,l(i2. 



Grace, Divine, 136, 137, 145, 160. 
Grammar, 17, 50, 83, 85, 145, 146, 227. 
Grammar schools, 69, 81, 84. 
Grandgousier, 16, 18, 23, 30. 
Great Didactic, Comenius's, 73, 77- 

84, 93. 
Great Instauration, Bacon's, 44, 45, 

48, 51-54, 63, 65, 92. 
Great men, 3, 46. 

Greatest Birth of Time, Bacon's, 42. 
Greece, 25, 98, 226. 
Greek, 23, 24, 50, 119, 121, 146, 227; 

authors, 131, 154; learning, 51,68; 

spirit, 227. 
Greeks, 26. 37, 43, 54, 227. 
Grey, Mrs., 219. 
Grimm, 157. 
Griiner, 195. 
Guimps, de, 180, 189. 
Guizot, Mme., 213, 217, 218. 
Gustavus, 76. 
Guy on, Mme., 148. 
Gymnasium, 81, 84-86, 129. 

Habit, 169. 

Hailmann, 199, 204-206. 

Hallam, 55. 

Hand, education of, 84, 86, 94, 121, 

175, 177. 
Happiness, 172-174. 
Hartlib, 73. 
Harvard College, 77. 
Hauranne, 138. 
Hazlitt, 100. 
Health, 119, 134. 
Heart, The, 188, 215. 
Heath, D. D., 40. 

Hebrew, 23, 24, 50; prophets, 157. 
Hegel, 96. 
Heloisa, The New, Rousseau's, 157, 

162. 
Helvetia, 185. 

Henry H. of Eng., 12 ; of France, 12. 
Henry VII., 41; VIII., 70. 
Herbart, 89, 189, 201. 
Herborn, 72. 
Hermes, 67. 
"Heroes," 3,7. 



INDEX. 



255 



Heulhard, A., 30. 

Higher education, 59, Gl, 63, 80, 229. 

Historia densi et rari, etc.. Bacon's, 

45. 
History, 23, 63, 82, 8i, 85, 87, 131; 

attitude of Locke and Montaigne 

towards, 120; of education, 2, 70, 

98 ; universal, 4. 
Hobbs, 167. 
Holland, 103, 138. 
Holofernes, 17. 
Home education, 116, 117, 141, 202, 

219, 231, 232; Influence, 116, 141, 

182, 214, 217-221 ; life, 208, 215, 231, 

232 ; work, 69, 87. 
Hoole, 90. 

Houdetot, Mme. d', 157. 
Household Education, Martineau's, 

219. 
How Gertrude teaches her Children, 

Pestalozzi's, 185, 190-193. 
Howe, Miss, 204. 
Huber, J., 126, 129, 130. 
Hughes, T., 125, 130, 140. 
Human nature, 1, 55-57, 66, 96, 180, 

188, 192, 224. 
Humanists, 43, 68, 85, 92, 94, 226-228. 
Humanities, 87, 129, 131, 208. 
Humanity, ethical evolution of, 180. 
Hume, 95. 
" Humours," 21. 
Hungary, 75. 
Huyghens, 105. 
Hygiene, 62. 
Hyperion, Longfellow's, 46. 

Ideal, The educational, 1, 8, 36, 49, 
124, 176, 218, 224, 228, 229. 

Idealism, 6. 

Ideas, 110-112. 

Idola, 55. 

Idols, 55-59, 113. 

Indirect education, 149, 150. 

Individual development, 130, 134, 150, 
179, 193, 202, 217, 220. 

Induction, 33, 46-48, 64, 65, 71, 88, 
92, 114. 

" Inner, outer," The, 200. 



Inquisition, The, 225. 

Inquisition, Hi>it. of, Lea's, 24. 

Instaurution, Great, Bacon's, 44, 45, 
48, 51-54, 63, 65, 92. 

Institution des enfans, Montaigne's, 
102, 115-123. 

" Instrument, New," 41-44, 46, 48, 52, 
113, 114. 

Intellectual democracy, 217 ; educa- 
tion, 2, 19, 08, 86, 88, 94, 129, 229; 
freedom, 59, 60, 122, 125, 131, 143, 
171, 225, 229. 

Isocrates, 25, 50. 

Isolation, 2, 179. 

Italy, 25, 156. 

Jacob, L., 13. 

Jacobins, 98, 154. 

James I., 39-41, 67. 

Janet, P., 148. 

Jansen, 138, 139. 

Jansenistes, Diet, des, 138. 

Jansenists, 6, 7, 124-152, 154, 159, 160, 
214, 230 ; attitude towards cliildren, 
141-144, IGO ; " Five propositions," 
136, 139, 144; influence, 137, 147, 
151; leaders, 138-140, 143; "Little 
schools," 142-144; text-books, 144- 
146; work in education, 141, 14-3- 
145, 152. 

Janua, Comenius's, 77, 78, 89, 90. 

Japanese perspective, 10. 

Jena, 195, 204. 

Jesuiten-Orden , Huber's, 126, 129, 
130. 

Jesuits, 6, 60, 61, 68, 69, 88, 92, 93, 
126-152, 154, 159, 171; attitude 
towards education, 128-131, 159; 
towards science, 132; casuistry, 
134, 135, 143, 147 ; character, 126- 
130, 135, 145, 147-154, 159, 171 ; Con- 
stitution, 127, 129, 131-134; course 
of study, 131 ; discipline, 133, 134 ; 
membership, 126 ; methods, 60, 69, 
88, 92, 133, 134 ; military spirit, 126, 
127, 130; privileges, 127; Ratio 
Studiorum, 129, 131-133; spirit, 
61, 69. 



266 



INDEX. 



Jesuites, Bert's, 135. 
Jesuits, Cartwright's, 135. 
Jouvency, 132. 

Kant, 6, 96. 

Katharine of Aragon, 70. 

Kepler, 48. 

Kliayyam, Omar, 32. 

Kindergarten, 59, 121, 200-204, 222. 

Kindergarten and Child Culture, 
Barnard's, 193, 200. 

Kindergartners, 218, 219. 

King, Lord, 104, 118. 

Knowledge, aim of, 53 ; ancient, 54, 
68 ; foundation of, 192 ; furthering 
of, 03, 68 ; origin of, 79 ; power of, 
127 ; preservation of, 63 ; progress 
in, 4, 53, 67 ; sphere of, 4, 48, 57, 68, 
82, 115; transmission of, 60; uni- 
versal, 180. 

Konig, W., 31. 

Komenski, 72. 

Kriisi, 188. 

Laboratories, 59, 63, 113. 

La Bruyere, 148. 

Lacroix, P., 13. 

La Harpe, 148. 

" Laissez-faire," 2, 161, 215. 

Lancaster, J., 85. 

Lancelot, 146. 

Lange, F. A., 71; AV., 190, 199, 200, 
201, 205, 206. 

Language, 191, 192. 

Languages, 23; dead, 50; modern, 
69, 120. 

Languages, method of teaching, Co- 
menius's, 77, 87, 89; Jansenists', 
146 ; .Jesuits', 131, 145 ; Montaigne's, 
116, 121; Ratich's, 71. 

Latin, 23, 50, 51, 72, 119-121, 145, 146, 
227; authors, 68, 131, 154: civiliza- 
tion, 37, 43 ; Comenius's, 90, 92, 94 ; 
scholastic, 9 ; school, 81. 

Laurie, S. S., 9, 73-79, 81, 82, 84- 
87. 

Law, 24, 27, 28, 63, 181. 

Lea, H. C, 24. 



Learning, 9, 49, 51, 52, 65, 119 ; an- 
cient, 54, 131 ; false, 127, 128, 225 ; 
mediaeval, 50, 113, 225, 226 ; preser- 
vation of, 60 ; true, 10, 43, 53, 57, 
59, 113, 127, 145. 

Legrand, 186. 

Leibnitz, 6, 105, 133. 

Lenient, 10. 

Leonard and Gertrude, Pestalozzi's, 
182-184. 

Lettres de famille sur Veduc, Mme. 
Guizot's, 217. 

Leveque, E., 21. 

Lihellus de inst. ^^f^^^is, Luther's, 
50. 

Liberal arts, 85, 122, 131. 

Libraries, 63, 226. 

Limborch, 106. 

Lion, T., 76, 79-84, 86, 87. 

Lisle, A. de, 17 

Lissa, 73, 75, 76. 

Literature of Europe, Hallam's, 55. 

lAtterature, De la, de Stael's, 214. 

"Little schools," 142-144. 

Locke, J., 6, 7, 95-123, 153, 154, 158, 
161, 163, 175, 2.30; agnosticism, 96, 
109, 110 ; character, 105, 158 ; epi- 
taph, 104; essay, 97, 102-112, fal- 
lacies, 109, 112; friendships, 105; 
influence, 113, 114; life, 102-104; 
pedagogy, 116-122 ; philosophy, 98, 
106, 107, 110-112, 159; principles, 
113, 116-118, 122; sense-realism, 
99, 107, style, 114; treatise on 
education, 102, 115-121; writings, 
96, 102, 104, 106, 110-121. 

Locke, Fox Bourne's, 104; King's, 
104, 118. 

Logic, 55, 131, 146. 

London, 74, 104. 

Longfellow, 46. 

Lord Chancellors, Campbell's, 37. 

Louis-le-Grand, College, 140. 

Louis XIV., 105, 147, 149, 151, 152. 

Louis XV., age of, 209. 

Love, 179-184, 189-193, 196, 199, 202, 
215 221. 

Lowell, E. J., 214. 



INDEX. 



257 



Loyola, 69 ; couversion of, 125 ; sys- 
tem of education, 01, 88, 127-129. 

Lotjola, Hughes's, 125, 130, 140. 

Lully, 23. 

Luther, democracy, 70 ; ideas of edu- 
cation, 50, 93; influence, 6, 49, 68, 
69, 95, 98, 125, 194, 208, 228 ; spirit, 
13, 115, 137. 

Macaulay, T. B., 66. 

Madonna, 182. 

Magnalia, Mather's, 76, 77. 

Maintenou^ Mme. de, 147, 151, 152, 

209. 
Malebranche, 109. 
Mann, Mrs. H., 197,219. 
Manners, Lady, 103. 
Manual training, 84, 86, 94, 121, 175, 

177. 
Mapletoft, J., 104. 
Marenholz-Bulow, 195, 197, 201, 202, 

204, 218. 
Market-place, Idols of, 55-58. 
Mars Gallica, Jansen's, 139. 
Martineau, H., 191, 218. 
Mary, Princess, 70. 
Mashams, The, 104. 
Masson, D., 73. 
Master-minds, 4, 46. 
Materialism, 95-97, 99, 107, 159, 161, 

168, 171, 200, 209, 229. 
Materialism, Hist, of, Lange's, 71. 
Mathematics, 204. 
Mather, C, 76, 77. 
Mazarin, 144, 
Mechanic arts, 59, 84, 121. 
Mechanics, 83. 
Medievalism, 4, 6, 37, 50, 131, 179, 

220, 228. 
Medicine, 24, 28. 
Melanchthon, 50, 68. 
Memory-training, 88. 
Mensuration, 84. 
Mental education, 2, 19, 68, 86, 88, 

129; freedom, 59, 60, 99, 122, 125, 

131, 143, 171, 225, 229. 
Metallurgy, 62. 
Metaphysics, 9, 33, 82, 97, 131. 



Method, 85-88, 94, 133, 134, 188. 

Method in Education, Rosmiui's, 201. 

Method us Novissima, Comenius's, 86. 

Meudon, 13. 

Michaelis, E., 198, 199, 202, 204, 231. 

Michelet, J., 12, 15, 101, 203. 

Middendorf,201. 

Middle Ages, 5, 8, 16, 98, 225-227. 

Military church, A, 125-128, 130. 

Milton, J., 25, 73. 

Mind, The, Idols besetting, 55, 56, 
113; laws of, 188; Locke's analysis 
of, 106-110, 113, 114; training of, 
60, 68, 80, 85, 117, 129, 202, 228. 

Miracle, faith in, 99. 

Modern languages, 69, 120. 

Moliere, 168. 

Molinists, 137. 

Monastic education, 88, 220. 

Monita secreta, 126. 

Monitorial system, 85. 

Montaigne, 6, 7, 50, 95-123, 154, 163, 
230; character, 96, 100, 101, 105; 
influence, 96, 101; inspirer of Locke 
and Rousseau, 101 ; limitations, 
116 ; maxims, 100 ; pedagogy, 116- 
122 ; skepticism, 9G, 97 ; treatise on 
education, 102, 115-122; writings, 
100-102, 115-123. 

Montaigne, Florio's, 101; Hazlitt's, 
100. 

Montpellier, 13, 103. 

Moore, H. K., 198, 199, 202, 201, 231. 

Moral education, 2, 19, 58, 80-85, 94, 
116, 119, 144, 170, 189, 205, 215, 217, 
230, 232; freedom, 99; enthusiasm, 
154," 160, 189, 230. 

Moravians, 70-73, 76, 92. 

More, H., 207; T., 25. 

Morley, J., 156-158, 171. 

Mother-heart, The, 184, 211. 

Motherhood, 182-184, 197, 206, 209- 
212, 215, 219, 221, 222, 231, 232. 

Mother-love, 196, 218. 

Mother-school, 81, 180, 232. 

Miiller, F. Max, 96. 

Miinchen-Buchsee, 187. 

Music, 19, 23, 83, 85, 200. 



258 



INDEX. 



Musset-Pathay, 158. 

Mythes et l^gendes, Leveque's, 21. 

Napier, Macvey, 64. 

Napoleon, 198. 

Natural development, 2, 160-177, 228, 
232; education, 2, 58, 59, 71, 143, 
220, 232; science, 24, 41, 44, 55, 68, 
69, 89, 227, 228, 229. 

Nature, 33, 43, 53, 55, 56, 79, 98, 160, 
161, 164, 174, 201, 202, 222, 228, 232; 
copartnership with, 10, 29, 220; 
divine rights of, 99; elements of, 
44, 48; evidence of God in, 68, 199; 
grandeur of, 46, 99, 122, 156 ; har- 
mony of, 33, 71, 198 ; interpretation 
of, 55, 68, 93; order in, 87, 88; 
philosophy of, 45, 48; Rousseau's 
love of, 15(5 ; the source of vir- 
tue, 162; study of, 41, 52, 59, 64, 
68, 93, 98, 227; subtlety of, 46, 55; 
supreme principle of, 33, 87 ; ulti- 
mate simplicity of, 54. 

Nature-spirit, 33, 156, 227. 

Nature-study, 59, 68, 89, 98. 

Necker, Mme., 213, 214. 

Necker de Saussure, Mme., 214-216. 

Neuhof, 181, 187, 190. 

Neio Atlantis, Bacon's, 62. 

"New education," The, 4, 18, 29, 57, 
59, 69, 98, 113. 

New England, 77. 

"New Instrument," The, 41-44, 46, 
48, 52, 113, 114. 

Newman, J. H., 109. 

Newspapers, 82. 

Newton, I., 6, 105, 121. 

Nicole, 146. 

Nineteenth century, 146, 183, 199, 
220, 229. 

Nineteenth Century, 96. 

Nisard, 51. 

" Noble savage," 161-166. 

Nos fils, Michelet's, 101, 204. 

Novum Organum, Bacon's, 40, 42, 
45-47, 52-55, 57. 

Number, 191, 192. 

Nuremburg, 78. 



Obedience, 130. 

Object-teaching, 59, 88, 90, 91, 114. 

"Occupations," Froebel's, 200, 202, 

203. 
Old Touraine, Cook's, 12. 
Oliva, P., 132. 
Optics, 82, 166. 
Oracle of Bottle, 31, 32. 
Oi'bis P ictus, Comenius's, 78, 90, 91. 
Order, 87, 88, 133, 134, 204. 
" Outer, inner," The, 200. 
Oxenstierna, 74, 77. 
Oxford, 103. 

Pachtler, G. M., 128-131. 

Pddagogik, Gesch. der, von Rau- 
mer's, 80, 82, 180,184,191; Schmidt's, 
195. 

"Palace-school," 8. 

Palatium, Comenius's, 78. 

Pan-Christian scheme, Comenius's, 
73-75, 92-94, 159. 

Pansophia, 74-76, 82, 85, 87. 

Pantagruel, 16, 21, 30, 31. 

Pantagruel, Rabelais's, 14, 15, 21, 
30. 

Panurge, 30-32. 

Papacy, The, 126, 137, 144, 159. 

Papal see, 11, 12, 126, 139. 

Pape-Carpantier, Mme., 219. 

Parental responsibility, 80, 115, 182, 
183, 202, 203, 212, 215, 217, 219, 231, 
232. 

Paris, 19, 21, 23, 144, 157, 208, 209, 
212-214 ; university of, 9. 

Parliament, Long, 74. 

Paroz, J., 134, 146, 185. 

Pascal, Blaise, 135-137, 139, 140; Jac- 
queline, 140, 152. 

Patak, 75, 76, 85. 

Paul III., Pope, 126. 

Paulet, Sir A., 38. 

Peabody, E. P., 219. 

Pedagogics, 17, 59, 63, 114, 149, 204, 
222; advancement of, 65,110; prin- 
ciples of, 58, 59 ; true basis of, 193. 

PMcigogie, Hist, de, Paroz's, 134, 146, 
185. 



INDEX. 



259 



Pedagogy, 33, 135 ; modern, 142 ; prin- 
ciples of, 120. 
Pedagogy, Hist, of, Compayre''s, 50, 

60, 128, 188. 
Pedantry, 1, 17, 224, 225. 
Pedarii, 51. 
Perception, 193, 204. 
Perigord, 96, 147. 

Pestalozzi, 7, 179-206, 207, 210, 221, 
230; character, 180, 181, 188, 189, 
197, 198; fanaticism, 180, 181, 195; 
genius, 182, 197, 198; life, 180-182, 
184-187, 196; pedagogics, 191, 193; 
perfecter of Kousseau, 179; prin- 
ciple of love, 180, 182-184, 192 ; I 
spirit, 189, 190, 194 ; " system," 183 ; 
teaching, 183, 186-190, 193; writ- 
ings, 182-185, 190-193. 
Pestalozzi and Pestalozzlanism, 

Barnard's, 183, 185, 192. 
Pestalozzi, Biber's, 191 ; De Guimps's, 

180, 189. 
" Pestalozzian institutions," 183. 
Pharmacy, 62. 
Philippe ]Egalite', 211. 
Philosophers, 7, 40, 47, 53, 96, 99, 101, 

113, 171, 190, 199, 201. 
Philosophes, Les, 97, 143, 154. 
Philosophy, 47, 87, 127, 131, 147, 166, 
201; Aristotle's, 43; Bacon's, 42- 
63, 69, 70, 74, 92, 93, 145 ; methods 
of, 46; of Nature, 45, 48; real, 28, 
121; scholastic, 9, 52, 53, 56; a 
universal, 74. 
Physical education, 2, 19, 21, 27, 88, 

117, 119, 121, 170, 171. 
Physics, 45, 62, 63, 82, 85. 
Picrochole, 29. 
Picture-books, 90. 
Piety, 79, 84, 87, 93, 94, 197. 
Plantagenets, 12. 
Plato, 23, 25, 50, 96, 100. 
Play, 121, 134, 200-203, 221. 
Playfair, J., 49. 
Pliny, 100. 
Poetry, 83, 131. 
Poland, 73-76. 
Political economists, 52, 221. 



Politics, 27, 83-85. 
Pompadour, Mme. de, 143, 209. 
Poor, The, 183-185, 190, 196. 
Pope, A., 37. 

Popes, Hist, of, Ranke's, 125. 
Port Royal, 137-146, 149, 151, 152, 160. 
Port Royal, Beard's, 136, 139, 144, 
146; Ste.-Beuve's, 136, 139, 141, 142, 
145. 
Port-Royal-in-the-Fields, 144. 
Practical Education, Edgeworth's, 

218. 
Precocity of learning, 60. 
Preni. Jansenistes, Ricard's, 139, 

142-145. 
Primary education, 88, 128. 
Progressive Education, Necker de 

Saussure's, 215. 
Protestants, 50, 93, 96, 124, 137, 142, 

156, 230. 
Proudhon, 210. 
Provincial Letters, Pascal's, 135- 

137, 139, 140. 
Prussia, 75. 
Psychologists, 7, 201. 
Psychology, 110, 112, 113, 167, 186, 

193, 200, 216, 232. 
Public education, 6, 50, 68, 70, 80, 81, 

84, 94, 116, 128, 183, 194, 228, 229. 
Pythagoras, 20, 25. 

Quadrivium, 85. 
Qualities, 110. 
Quick, R. H., 71, 132, 183. 
Quietism, ^48-151. 
Quincy, J., 77. 
Quintilian, 23. 

Rabelais, F., 4, 7, 10-35, 36, 46, 50, 84, 
97, 98, 101, 114, 154, 179 ; character, 
10; genius, 11, 36; idea of free- 
dom, 29; influence, 4, 10, 34, 37; 
learning, 32; life, 11-13; medical 
career, 13; purpose, 15, 97; repu- 
tation, 15, 21; style, 16, 34; writ- 
ings, 10, 14-18, 21, 29, 30. 

Rabelais, Besant's, 34; Fleury's, 13, 
30, 34. 



260 



INDEX. 



Rabelais, Readings in, Besant's, 18, 

28, 30, 35. 
Kacine, 151. 
Ramayana, 21. 
Rambouillet, Hotel de, 143. 
Rauke, 125. 

Ratich (Ratke), 70, 71, 74, 93, 94. 
Ratio Studiorum, 127-134. 
Raumer, vou, 80, 82, 94, 180, 184, 191. 
Rawley, Dr., 38, 43, 71. 
Reading, 55, 84, 119. 
Realism, 6. 
Reflection, Locke's use of the term, 

110. 
Reformation, The, 13, 70, 124, 125, 

228. 
Reformers, 12, 36, 49, 70, 113, 180, 

195, 197, 225. 
Religion, 28, 79, 84, 124, 135, 159, 199, 
204, 218; and childhood, 159, 199. 
Reminiscences, Marenholz-Bulow's, 

195, 197, 201, 202. 
Remusat, C. de, 46. 
Renaissance, The, 4, 5, 9, 10, 15, 36, 
50, 51, 64, 70, 98, 99, 131, 179, 225- 
229. 
Representative Men, Emerson's, 100. 
Revelation, 96, 97. 
Revival of letters, 68. 
Rewards, 120, 134, 177. 
Rhetoric, 83, 85, 131, 227. 
Ricard, 139, 142-145. 
Richelieu, 139. 
Richter, 46. 
Right, The, 205, 218. 
Robinson Crusoe, 165. 
Roman Empire, Gibbon's, 137. 
Rome, 100, 226. 
Roothaan, P., 129. 
Rosmini-Serbati, 201. 
Rousseau, 7, 50, 98, 101, 122, 141, 150, 
152-178, 179, 190, 194, 207, 209-215, 
219, 230; character, 153, 155-159; 
Confessions, 155-157; educational 
system, 160-177; errors, 162-174; 
influence, 171, 172, 177, 178; life, 
155-158 ; and Locke, 158, 159 ; love 
of nature, 156; moral enthusiasm. 



154, 157; theism, 159; writings, 

98, 153, 154, 157-177, 179, 210, 212. 
Rousseau, Girardin's, 152; Morley's, 

156-158, 171 ; Musset-Pathay's, 158; 

de Stael's, 153. 
Royal Society, 62, 128. 
Rubaiyat, 32. 

Saci, de, 141. 

St. Albans, Viscount, 40. 

St. Cyr, 151, 152. 

St. Cyran, Abbot of, 138-142. 

Sainte-Beuve, 136, 139, 141, 142, 145, 
211, 213, 217. 

Sainte-Marthe, 142. 

Saint-Simon, 148. 

Salomon's House, 62. 

Saussure, Mme. Necker de, 214-216. 

Savill, Sir H., 63. 

Savoy, 156. 

Scandinavia, 6, 74, 75, 194. 

Schmidt, Frau, 198, 199, 202 ; .J., 203; 
K., 195. 

Schola Ludus, Comenius's, 92. 

Scholasticism, 9, 28, 58, 71, 131, 145, 
225, 229. 

Scholastics, 9, 37, 43, 53, 111, 123, 
145, 227. 

Seholemaster, Ascham's, 50. 

Schoolmen, 1, 9, 49, 52, 74, 76, 113, 
131, 146, 224, 225. 

School periods, 81, 84; regulations, 
87, 88. 

Schools, 80, 81, 84, 87, 220, 231; en- 
dowed, 102, 116, 208 ; grammar, 69, 
81, 84 ; secondary, 6!), 80, 128. 

Science, 48, 59, 129, 166, 222; of edu- 
cation, 5, 17, 21, 59, 63, 113, 114, 
149, 204, 221 ; groAvth of, 46 ; uni- 
versal, 4. 

Sciences, 51, 62, S6; physical, 69, 89. 

Scientific perspective, 216 ; spirit, 41, 
127, 132, 213. 

Scriptures, The, 18, 23, 24, 51, 68, 85, 
93, 96, 132. 

Secondary schools, 69, 80, 128. 
Self-activity, 6, 114, 193, 200, 202; 
discipline, 58, 117 ; emancipation. 



INDEX. 



261 



59, 64, 122; forgetting, 193; im- 
provement, 225; occupation, 202; 
reliance, 122. 

Semi-Pelagians, 136, 138. 

Sensationalism, 98, 99, 107, 108, 110, 
229, 230. 

Sense-realism, 99, 106, 107. 

Senses, 56, 57, 88, 92, 98, 99, 229 ; cul- 
tivation of, 98; imperfection of, 
57 ; subtlety of, 55 ; training of, 
57, 88, 90, 94, 99, 229, 231. 

Seventeenth century, 70, 112, 115, 
208, 209. 

Shaftesbury, 103. 

Shakespeare, 31, 67. 

Shirreff, E., 219. 

Sixteenth century, 12, 16, 115. 

Skepticism, 96, 97. 

Slavs, 72. 

Social speculations, 181. 

Society of Jesus, 6, 60, 61, 68, 69, 88, 
92, 93, 126-152, 154, 159, 171. 

Society, Royal, 62, 128. 

Sociology, 221. 

Socrates, 25, 50, 122. 

Solomon, 24, 62. 

Sougs, Froebel's, 203. 

Sophie, 210. 

Sophism, 17, 55. 

Soul, The, 229. 

Spain, 70. 

Spare Hours, Brown's, 106. 

Spedding, J., 38-45, 48, 51-54, 60, 62, 
71, 97. 

Stael, Mme. de, 153, 154, 194, 210, 214. 

Stanz, 186-188, 190, 192. 

Stapfer, P., 32. 

Statics, 83. 

Stentor, 20. 

Stephen, Sir J., 16. 

Ster7i, Stapfer's, 32. 

" Steward" case, 40. 

Strafford, 74. 

Strasburg, 50. 

Stuarts, The, 105. 

Studies at Leisure, Courtney's, 97. 

Study, Bacon 's^5sa?/o/, 63; Locke's, 
106, 118. 



Sturm, 50, 68, 69, 227. 
Supernalists, 97. 
Sweden, 74-76. 
Switzerland, 185, 194. 
Sydenham, 105. 
Syllogism, 9, 28, 61. 
Sylva Sylvarum, Bacon's, 45. 
Symbolism, 225. 

Sympathy, 142, 150, 180, 202, 215, 220, 
221. 

Tabula rasa, 106, 160. 

Talmudists, 24. 

Tamburini, P., 132. 

Teachers, 85, 133, 149, 189, 191, 230; 

ideal, 116, 150; maxims for, 86; 

province of, 80, 220, 231, 232; and 

pupils, 205, 218 ; salaries of, 63. 
Teaching, indirect, 149 ; methods of, 

63, 106, 120, 142; modern, 142, 194; 

principles of, 58, 86, 186, 192. 
Technology, 21, 26, 62, 84. 
Tdemaque, Fenelon's, 149. 
Terrestrial system, 54. 
Text-books, 144-147, 149. 
Textual criticism, 69, 94. 
Theatre, Idols of, 55, 56, 59. 
Theism, 158, 159. 
Theleme, Abbey of, 29, 30, 33. 
Theocracy, 213. 
Theodelet, 17. 
Theology, 85, 87, 127, 132, 136-138, 

144. 
Thirty Years' War, 72, 92. 
Thomas, St., 132. 
Thuringia, 195. 
Time-spirit, 5, 127, 198. 
Toleration, Letters on, Locke's, 

102. 
Tollemache, 139. 
Touraine, 11, 20. 
Transcendentalism, 29, 148, 201. 
Travel, 81, 116. 
Tribe, Idols of, 55, 57. 
Trivium, 85, 227. 
Tully, 50. 
Tunstal, 19. 
Tutors, 116, 117, 208. 



262 



INDEX. 



United Brethren, 72. 

United States, The, 81, 153, 187, 194, 

205, 219. 
Unity, 190, 194, 195, 198-200, 231. 
Universal Church, 93 ; harmony, 198 ; 

language, 92 ; philosophy, 74, 92. 
Universe, The, 54, 85, 89, 96, 99, 122, 

205. 
Universities, 63, 81, 86, 128, 130, 152, 

225. 
Universities,' Rise of, Laurie's, 9. 
University of Paris, 9. 
University, Idea of, Nevirman's, 109. 
Upham, f. C, 148." 
Utilitarianism, 122, 170, 175-177. 
Utopia, 25. 

Vasseur, Therese Le, 157. 
Vernacular school, 81, 84, 86, 92. 
Versailles, 99. 
Verulam, 40, 93. 

Vestihulum, Comenius's, 77,78, 89, 90. 
Villiers, 40. 
Virgil, 21. 
Vives, 70, 71, 94. 

Vulgate, The, 132. 

Wallace, E., 107. 
Wareus, Mme. de, 156, 174. 
Weimar, 71. 
Westminster school, 102. 



William III., 104. 

Winthrop, J., 77. 

Wolsey, 19. 

Women, 205, 207, 210, 221, 222 ; duties 
of, 50, 208, 219 ; education of, 149, 
150, 152, 197, 212, 219 ; in education, 
207-223, 230, 232 ; English, 208, 218 ; 
ethical sense of, 180, 215 ; French, 
208, 209; gentle, 224; German, 208, 
218; influence of, 7, 137, 138, 143, 
219; leadership of, 137, 138, 143, 
210; as observers of children, 216; 
power of, 197, 207, 209, 219, 220, 
231 ; rights of, 172, 208, 219, 220. 

Word-philosophies, 55, 227. 

Words, 56, 111 ; abuse of, 109, 112 ; 
worship of, 58. 

Wordsworth, 177. 

Wright, W. A., 52. 

Writing, 84, 119. 

Xenophon, 50. 

York House, 38. 
^pres, Bishop of, 138. 
Yverdun, 187-190, 193, 195, 197. 

Zoology, 62. 
Zoubek, 79, 82, 83. 
Zschokke, 185. 
Zurich, 180, 181. 



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